The Wrong Side of You
by California Thrash
Summary: AU. Yaoi. Heero and Duo are members of syndicates. Thoughts of mass murder and uprisings in L-1 and L-2 throw them into a violent alliance. After bold assaults on the colonies, they steal the half-finished Wing Gundam to stop the madness. 1x2, 3x4, DCx2
1. Verse Chorus Verse

The Wrong Side of You  
by Chustang  
  
  
Part 1  
VERSE CHORUS VERSE  
  
  
A cold course of action faced him. Die or kill. Kill or die. Kill that agent, or he would retaliate and kill him. Fingering the trigger on his faithful colt, the only gun, a practice gun, he'd had with him at the time he had been pulled into this encounter, he wondered. He snaked around him, putting one leg to the side at a time. The injured lump of nine-year-old kid lay where his attacker had kicked him.  
  
At the moment Heero had encountered him in the dark alley, it was those eyes that been the first thing to intimidate him in his life besides the scolding of his harsh teachers, Dr. J and his blood lusting assistants. Heero had seen more loss in those violet tinted eyes than scars on his back, even if the kid hooded them to hide it. But training had kicked in and erased sympathy when he had seen that familiar tattoo under his chin of a peace sign filled in blood red; Dr. J's rival crime syndicate's autograph: The Deuces. He had wasted no more time staring at hurt-filled eyes and sent the boy to the ground. The metallic clatter of a weapon disrupted the alley's quiet and Heero saw the barrel of an experiment laser rifle poke out from the Deuce's trench coat.  
  
Heero licked some blood on his lip. The Deuce had managed to get a fingernail across his face before he went down. Allowing himself a moment to pinch the blood to a stop, Heero kept the barrel of his colt leveled precisely. One wrong move and that kid would be ground beef. He would like to take him in for interrogation, though. That would get him merits and therefore better training, better rank, and best of all, better weapons to defend himself.   
  
Heero's daydream of a jack rifle or gundanium knife was interrupted by a splitting bout of coughing from the Deuce. The eight-year-old got into a stance and aimed his gun, slowing to a halt directly in back of him. He heard internal bleeding in that coughing, and the crimson proof ran on the blacktop. The child shifted weakly and most vocally. A grunt or yelp of peaking pain accompanied him until he managed to move his head from his fetal position to the side so one violet eye found Heero through a pile of brown bangs. A braid came from nowhere and lay limply beside the Deuce's face.  
  
"Alive, I see," Heero said. "I could always fix that, so don't try anything, Deuce-shit."  
  
"Yeah," the Deuce said. "I didn't plan… on it."   
  
That voice seemed way too deep for a kid barely past kindergarten. Heero was suspicious and moved the sights from the chest to the exposed neck. It was the typical gangster death, a bullet to the throat. But a slow death of bleeding would also give him time to get the Deuce to his headquarters and would render him powerless.   
  
"Am I going to die?"  
  
"What?" Heero was strained by this question. Who hired this dipshit of a kid? Of course he was going to die, he'd just been captured!   
  
He closed one blue eye and focused his sights, which subconsciously went to those unnerving colored eyes. They were dull and lifeless already, like death was nothing new to them. "Well, what do you think Deuce?"  
  
A smile pierced all that grimness. A smile missing a bucktooth.   
  
"I think," he said, smart-assed, "you're going to take me home and bake me cookies and then let me fall asleep by the furnace."  
  
Heero was somewhat amused by this, but then again, amusement came rare and in niggardly packages. This kid was in serious psychological shit… It was funny.  
  
"Yes, in a way."  
  
The ghostly purple lit up. "Really?" he rasped out, lifting his head laboriously from his coughed-up pool of blood. The Deuce's odd plait of hair was swinging in that crimson. Heero almost felt guilty seeing such innocence.  
  
"If you replace cookies with cyanide and sleep with die, yes," Heero replied, dispatching a shell to the shoulder to shut him up. His mindset was once again set on bloodletting and completion of the mission and the harsh bastard tone in his voice reflected that conviction. The alleyway, with its stereotypical billows of steam and dingy attitude, echoed with the ricocheting bullet as it easily ripped a bloody hole through the kid and continued on its way. Heero smirked as the body collapsed silently again, and predicted the path of the glancing bullet. The eight-year-old Jisatsu agent took a metal plate from his makeshift bulletproof vest and didn't jolt an inch as he caught it in the metal. Heero popped it out like a freshly made plastic creep crawly and stored it back in his colt.  
  
Easy.  
  
The Deuce again made labored movements, raising his hole-pocked body up to speak.  
  
"You know… I like cyanide," the Deuce squeaked with hints of pain at the back of his cracking bass voice. Who did this kid think he was scaring? Heero rolled his eyes and pulled out a metal cord.  
  
"You're the usual Deuce whitehead, you know that? Smart-assed, ham-fisted, and you pop if you get squeezed by one measly bullet," he grumbled as he approached the body, eyes always considering the lethal shape of the gun under that thin cloth.   
  
Heero pounced on his back, pressing one boot to his head, hooking his head back like a lethargic heifer. The cord was too dull to slice any kind of human flesh or bone. The Deuce numbly accepted it like an old cow for slaughter and closed his indigo eyes. The Adam's apple in his neck bobbed up and down trying to talk, but the first few times were just raspy gasps, muddled by the pain shooting through his shoulder. Meanwhile, Heero ripped the gun from its strap that the Deuce had hidden in his coat.  
  
"That's the first time I've been compared to a zit," he said listlessly. "You're like a poet, you know? A gross poet, a gross homicidal poet…"  
  
Heero coldly knocked him upside his head. "I've got more colorful language for you, Deuce. Now, if you want to live, you'll come with me for interrogation --"  
  
"Do you honestly think I want to live?"  
  
Heero looked at him. Stupid deranged hippie American… he looked so lost. More so than even himself. The guilt returned in a screaming ball in his stomach and he suppressed it again.  
  
"No,'' Heero answered truthfully.  
  
Heero kept on with his work, making quick use of his demolition skills on disengaging the owner lock on the gun. He hooked it into a spare holster and collected the jagged ends of the cord into one hand so he kept the head up. Ignoring the coppery scent of blood snaking through his senses and the feel of it as it pumped steadily from the bullet hole, Heero flipped the boy over like raw hamburger and stood there taking in the Deuce's new face for his computer database of a mind, pinning him down mercilessly with a boot. The Deuce was a limp as a dead body, just trying to stay conscious.  
  
American. Definitely, with large, expressive doll eyes. A carved pug nose. Babyish, ruby-pink lips. A solid neck. A hard-set jaw but not overly masculine jaw. Heero snorted coldly at the blood that came at the corner of the boy's lips.  
  
It didn't surprise him that this kid was American. The Deuces hailed from L-2, the space colony with a mostly American or Spanish population. The syndicate he was currently training under, Jisatsu, was from L-1, and like the name suggested, Japanese. The sleazy members of these crime-hungry gangs were calling this the underground World War II. All they needed now was a bomb to drop on New Nagasaki. It was the fiercest but smartest rivalry for a few centuries. Attacks were placed on each other with passion but not recklessness. It rarely leaked to the media and rarely got out of hand.   
  
Heero leaned in and retched the boy's chin back to look at the tattoo. The Deuce finally passed out in pain and went lolling limp with eyes plunged into the back of his head, like spaghetti in Heero's hand. "932071," Heero confirmed to himself. The agent unceremoniously let the head smack against the tar frequented by puddles of rainbow oil discharge. The Deuce's face still found no peace, screwed up in pain. Heero slipped the cord into his pocket. A quick scan of the grungy, drug-scented made his hair stand on end like trees in a hurricane.  
  
Heero was about to pick up the limp body of the Deuce when that six-sense froze him in place, hearing far off but approaching voices.  
  
"Jesus, where could that little fuck be?"  
  
"Always was the little smart-ass, if you ask me," a different voice intoned. "Maxy! Yo, Maxy! God… who let him out for the night anyway? Who's idea was that?"  
  
"Don't look at me, bitch."  
  
"Oh I don't want to, ugly as you's is."  
  
"Ugly or not, that street fuck is our salvation, ya hear? Lose him and those Japs will get the upper hand. Then we'll be screwed to hell."  
  
"Well, Maxy sure won't. We can always cancel that whore for his thirteenth birthday, right? Maybe that's motivation for his soggy cereal ass."  
  
"Ah, Maxy don't know what a whore is. He couldn't even spell it."  
  
"That's because I was going to give him a lesson but fuck! – I couldn't, now could I?"  
  
"Shut up. I think I smell something."  
  
"Jer, this is a bitchin' alley. It don't smell like no bed of roses, you know, or no perfume. By the way… what is that shit you got on?"  
  
"God, shut up!"  
  
By now, the animal-instinct Heero was already ready to run. Flashing dangerous looks up both paths of the alley, he skillfully tucked the Deuce's hair into his torn trench coat as to hide his discernable feature so that his comrades might not come investigating. That was the best-light situation. But, biting his lip, he knew shit went wrong. He cussed as the clothing of the Deuce shifted and the raucous voices grew perilously close, eyes as wide as a cornered fox. The Deuce moaned in his sleep, and Heero wanted to smack him for giving away his position. Heero, cloaked into the black background by his black coat, paused indecisively once he spotted the gold chain against the back of the Deuce's neck.   
  
A gold necklace  
  
Something like that would see him a few good thousand dollars on the L-1 market, where gold was rarely imported. Heero snatched at it the last minute, as his newly acquired gun was stashed and the L-2 citizen made a guttural noise. Two shadows loomed only thirty feet away, in the mouth of the alley. Heero bolted. He grunted, nearly losing his grip on the wet, cobblestone alley, and used a nearby dumpster as a barricade, as an overly eager onslaught of bullets tailed him.  
  
"Aw shit, I knew I smelled Jap! Come on, Lou, what are you doing? We gotta get that kid!"  
  
"What the fuck are you doing?! This is Maxy!"  
  
"No way he got smacked up by that little thing! You saw that little Jisatsu running; he wasn't even Maxy's age."  
  
"I know… but God, look what he did to his ribs."  
  
"Gnarly. Is that fucking bone stickin' out like that?"  
  
"That's fucking bone."  
  
"Come on Jer, we gotta get that bastard."  
  
"Leave Maxy here and you're boiled in oil, Lou. Shit… he got a hole in his shoulder the size of his fucking ego."  
  
"… Jesus, the things I do for this street fuck."  
  
"Grab his feet, I'll get his head and stuff. Careful, dickhead! Kill this 'street fuck' and we will have our heads on Jap sticks!"  
  
"I am careful!"  
  
"Well, not enough!"  
  
"…Jeremy… Lou?"  
  
"Welcome back, dipshit."  
  
"Don't call me that… I've heard it enough…"  
  
"What did that Jisatsu do to you? Get his name or anything?"  
  
"No, no…"  
  
"Anything at all?"  
  
"Jeeze, you worthless–"   
  
"Lou, shut the anus on you face, okay? Now, Maxy… did you get anything? Whaddid he look like? And I smack you to hell if you say like a Japanese pug again; do you know how long it took us to find the other one?"  
  
"He was…just like me..."  
  
"Come on Lou, he's worse than we thought."  
  
"Mad Max, you's are fucking insane! There ain't no way there's a Jap just like you, you're better than any of them Orientals."  
  
"No… he was…"  
  
The Deuce now lay in a pained daze, hammocked between his two grungy, typical Italian gangster-flavored street rats like himself, only a decade or so older. The nine-year-old assassin lolled his head back against Jeremy, or Jer for short, for support. His body ached like a sliced piece of bread. The rest of the cuss-spiced conversation between Jer and Lou was lost on him, for he numbly watched the figure of the Jisatsu slip away in to the alley, water occasionally flying from his feet and catching light. He could have sworn it stopped once or twice.  
  
Maxy fell into light sleep until he was dumped, a lot gentler than usual but still dumped all the same, on to a hospital cot safely inside the L-2 abandoned warehouse, a.k.a. the Deuce Headquarters. He allowed himself to be swarmed by the smutty American nurses the second Lou and Jer backed off, who's clothes had been tailored by the horny older Deuces past puberty, allowed them to croon over him, and nearly rape him in their hurry to seal up his obvious wounds. A brilliant light stared down at him like a sun and in the background he could hear the drunken swoon of his comrades and the disapproving grunt of Dr. G.  
  
The skin around his purplish-blue eyes tightened as he tried to talk. All that came out was a gargled mix of blood and a shriek of pain. One nurse put her finger to his lips and sat beside his head, cleaning up the blood with little success. It still left traces on his skin. She bit her lip, he thought, but it was getting harder to discern things with the light seemingly getting brighter. "Shush, it's okay," she crooned.  
  
"I really don't think you should be telling the boy such lies," came Dr. G's voice as he strolled into the room. Maxy vaguely caught the sound of a door clicking shut. The flurry of hands tending to each wound, long-fingernailed and manicured, recoiled from helping him suddenly as another, more deadly click came to ear. Craning his head painfully, he was met by the barrel of his own gun in Dr. G's hand. All the nurses, except for the one that kept stroking his hair, had retreated at the professor's look and left his bloody torso naked and red in the light. "It is not okay."  
  
The Deuce tried to gulp; it would make him feel better about what was coming. His throat was too dry.  
  
"You better have a damned good reason for this, 93207," Dr. G said dangerously, finding the safety with one finger and clicking it off. "I didn't train you for your entire life to end up a soft-stomached nothing. Internal bleeding? That's nothing, right? You remember the exercise we have for internal bleeding, don't' you?"  
  
He grimly nodded as much as he could without inducing pain.  
  
The mushroom shaped man, body slumped with age but not his mind or cruelty, stepped slightly into the light, but only his dagger nose, bubbly lips, and scar were visible under his hair. "So. You know what that means, don't you?"  
  
He shook his head, sweat-slicked bangs clouding his already blurry vision. He didn't need to see that expression to feel it.  
  
"No?"   
  
Dr. G chuckled.  
  
The barrel finally left the spot between his brows and slid back into Dr. G gray slacks. As much as his heaving, violently bleeding chest would allow, he sighed a bit of relief.  
  
"Now, I won't be a complete bastard to you. You have been one our best students ever, not to mention a constant, if prohibited, uplifting humor to the rest of our syndicate, and I suppose I'll never be able to stop you from doing that. I admit you show a genius for public infiltration and mechanics but you must understand that all of that is a pathetic waste if you die because of such minor injuries. This is nothing, boy."  
  
The Deuce tore his eyes away from his professor. It was reversed by a raw slap from the decrepit man that left him about to fall off the metal table. Screwing up his face and breathing ragged, the nine-year-old body just curled on its side, about to fall to the floor that seemed could kill him. He watched the blood spill out on to the cement until Dr. G circled around the table. Maxy stared at his torso as long as he dared before craning his head.  
  
"Never, never look away from me, you piece of shit," he glowered.  
  
"Yes sir," he managed to reply submissively. God, how much his neck hurt… it was funny, that his neck ached so much he couldn't stand it while he rarely cared about the rib through his skin and the bullet hole in his shoulder. But he wasn't laughing.  
  
"Good." A long, wrinkling hand pushed him over back onto his back. "Now, I know you do not want to repeat the internal bleeding training, correct?"  
  
The Deuce stared up at the ceiling. His lips moved once, nothing came, and he tried again.   
  
"Yes sir." It was barely audible.  
  
"Good. But you still aren't looking at me." Maxy screamed as the raw slap was replaced with a sharp yank to his braid that sent more than a few strands ripping.   
  
Tears came finally from the child as his cruel professor fingered it dangerously. A predator look came to those squinted eyes and an innocent sob came from Maxy, afraid for the only memory of his mother. Buried somewhere in training, lonely nights, pain, and drunken days granted by his comrades, he could remember his mother cradling him and running her fingers through his hair. She always smelled like strawberries. It was his sole speck of reassurance that he always had.  
  
Luckily, Dr. G lost interest in torturing his victim/student.  
  
"Now," he spat coldly. "You see that rib? I want you to set it back in place. Until you do that, I will not allow any nurse to touch you, for physical or emotion support or healing." He eyed up the nurse that remained stubbornly by the bloodstained cot and she obediently bowed her head and swiftly exited. Maxy watched her go with a bit of wretchedness. A raw slap brought him back to Dr. G's face, contorted by anger and dissatisfaction. "Set it, or we will find a replacement for you."  
  
The mushroom shaped man recoiled into the shadow, still retaining the gun at the ready.  
  
For what seemed like over an hour, the boy struggled against his mounting nausea, dizziness, and rapid loss of blood. His body arched from pain the second any one of his muscles moved and bouts of coughing were as frequent as stripes on a zebra. Bloodied hands gingerly wrapped around the exposed bone, and with a scream, he put it back into the jagged flesh and blacked out. Dr. G waved in the nurses, watched them go to quick work. One again seated herself by his head, this time unbraiding his hair and gently grooming it as the rest sewed up his bullet hole and ripped chest. Then they disappeared, taking him.  
  
Dr. G spat and smashed the gun under his foot quite easily. This boy would never break… to them or against them.  
  
  
  
  
6 Years Later  
  
  
  
  
He'd just been scanning for a file when he found the piece of paper. Accidentally grabbing it, he'd noticed it was blank on the side he'd pulled it out, but on the other side was only a number and an envelope attached to the right hand corner. He'd stashed it quickly into his pocket as another Jisatsu member had passed by in this more bustling section of the office. Secretly, he finished his task, drawing out an information file on the Deuce's new recruits, and dropping it off distantly on the main desk on his way back to the outside. He unlocked one of the large metal doors with his fingerprints, regular procedure, and continued out to the grassy metal enclosure that was protected from the outside.  
  
The grass ditch was what people called it because basically that was all it was: a metal dome with grass strewn across the bottom. A few weeks ago, the artificial grass had taken root and grown a good three inches and just yesterday had been cut. It smelled wonderful, crisper and wetter than normal grass, but that didn't compensate enough for the horribly polluted air of L-1.   
  
Today, shielding his eyes from the bright, imitated sun lamps, he saw that he was the only one there. The Japanese boy randomly picked a spot in the football field sized dome and sat down. He fished out the paper and unfolded it, holding it up to the light. First of all, the fact of one side being empty had startled him. Four years ago the last large tree had been harvested and all the paper on L-1 was either spilling with as much information as possible or was recycled with a grayish hue to it. This sheet had been completely white. The other thing that had caught his attention was it was distinctly his handwriting. The number was odd too. Why had he written this down? 93207 was all it said.  
  
Thrown for a loop because he couldn't remember, Heero moved on to opening the envelope, which had made an enticing jingle on the way out.  
  
He carelessly ripped open the envelope, and cupped his hand as a cold metal object poured in. Heero held up a gold chain with a crucifix and Latin written on the back. Of course he could read it, but he was too busy trying to remember what this was from. There was no gold on L-1, and very little Christianity at all, or if there was, it was mostly in secret and under scrutiny from the mostly Shinto-Buddhist colony.   
  
The artificial sunlight was intense that day, imitating a muggy afternoon for anybody who wanted to escape the cramped, almost too cool offices that dotted L-1 like freckles. Of all the colonies, this had to be the most industrialized. Heero didn't like it. He'd been raised in the bowels of the city, had killed in the city, and had wasted his childhood in the city.  
  
He sat there for a good fifteen minutes, turning the gold over in his hand.   
  
The wind kicked in around 1:00. He finally became so consumed by his curiosity that he was tempted to smell it. But he doubted he'd be able to find anything except the dull scent of paper. The Japanese boy, now fourteen, brought his arms around his knees and just stared at it. The light glinted off it like it was brand new, but he recognized the scratchiness of his younger handwriting. That must have been in there for years. He wished he'd left more written down. This was going to eat at the back of his mind forever and he'd never relax, even on his vacation.  
  
He sighed and ran his fingers back through his scruffy bangs. A quick surveying confirmed that he was still alone in the grass ditch. He stretched his lanky figure out and tried to loosen his joints. Although there hadn't been a raid on L-1 for months, the constant threat was burned into his mind by a lifetime of teaching that all Deuces were nothing but bastard scum bags that kidnapped children and butchered dogs. He was beginning to question all that.   
  
Heero put on the gold chain and hid it under his thin white shirt and green tie. He'd be burned at the stake if any of his superiors saw a Christian cross on him. Or something drastic at least.  
  
He'd only been back wandering the office for a few minutes, doing random favors for the clearly overworked, wrinkled, and loudly cussing Japanese people hunched over papers, when he was called to the fifth floor by a discreet secretary. As he stood alone in the elevator, he scrutinized his reflection. A sort of warped, war-hardened Asian Enrique Iglesias throwback stared back at him with fierce blue eyes. He'd never thought about it much, but it was odd that he had blue eyes…not brown.  
  
Along the curve of his neck was a scar from one of his first truly brutal missions into a Deuce base. He shook his head solemnly. The blood, the knives, and all the children in the other room screeching and cringing in the doorway… they were way to vivid, like the taste of wine from last night. But that was four years ago… and the carnage hadn't added up to more than one painless death, achieved by the element of surprise, which obviously was lost after the first few seconds, a few raised tempers and adrenaline levels, and his own scar where he'd been slit. He folded his arms tightly, almost consoling the look he gave himself. In the week he'd been working with the oblivious people, or gaijins as they were sometimes called since they were foreign to the crime scene, Heero knew he'd grown soft. It even stung when he gingerly touched his scar, even when it had stopped hurting two years ago.  
  
A flurry of plants rushed up past him in the glass window and was plunged into black again. His reflection proved much more worried this time.  
  
They would change that…  
  
An advertisement. It passed so quickly he blinked once and it was already below him, a floor down. Heero briefly caught a freeze frame in his near photographic memory. A smiling family eating ice cream through wind-swept hair in the back of a pickup, which strolled through gorgeous a L-5 forest.   
  
Oh, they would change that.  
  
No more 'innocent' civilian life for him.  
  
The bell toll at floor five woke him up and he fully expected to be swept out by a current of people into the undertow of frantic workers hurrying to their jobs. But the glass doors opened to emptiness. Heero strolled out, a bit confused at this deathly quiet floor. A bank desk to his left, facing a hall of businesses, coffee shops, beanie baby dispensers, ATMs, and escalators to the convenience stores downstairs; a skywalk to his left and three more elevators. He felt like he was walking in a carpeted desert.  
  
Taking advantage of the abandoned popcorn stand, Heero filled his stomach a bit and navigated his way through the echoing halls to a Jisatsu office that few knew of or noticed. It was wedged between a renovating clothes store and a Vietnamese restaurant. It was disguised as a newly rented space: tarped and masked by a Coming Soon sign. Clever, but the unlashed tarp kept waving out in the air conditioning and gave secretive windows to the outside. If it had been anywhere as busy as usual, the secrecy would have lasted ten seconds at the most.  
  
A coy woman ushered him in, clearly dressed to please the men inside. Heero surveyed for any trailers, then stepped under the tarp.   
  
"Boss-san wants to see you. Go quickly; his temper can be quick," she warned in Japanese, lit by the dim light of candle hooked on the wall.   
  
Heero bowed a thank you and continued down the shady hall. He passed four more smutty women on his way, which sensually blew smoke at him after lifting their cigarettes. They apparently didn't care that he was only a fourteen-year-old boy. Indifferent, he shot them no accusing looks but wanted to. But then again… insulting a man's whores wasn't a way to get on his good side. Heero ducked through a bead curtain and stepped into a lavish, Indian-style room. Apparently, the crime had been good lately.  
  
"Ah, good to see you again, Heero," a man exclaimed from his seat behind a desk in Japanese. "Enjoy your vacation, did you?"  
  
"Hai."  
  
"Still not very talkative I see." The man lit his own cigarette and puffed once. He dropped it in the ashtray, finding the smoke too acid for his liking right now. He offered the boy a seat and it was silently accepted. "Well, that's not necessarily a bad thing."  
  
The man, oddly tall for his ethnic background, leaned across the desk and shook hands, weaving among the statues of Buddha and Mid-East trinkets. Heero reminded himself to wash his hands afterward, no telling where they'd been. The man known only as Boss, or Boss-san depending on what language, folded his hands in his lap and seemed to sum up Heero's face like a bank report. He saw that his potential hadn't dulled on the inside since his vacation, just a bit physically. But that was easily fixed.  
  
"So," Heero said, breaking the look, "you wanted to see me." It was a statement, with no question in his voice. He was never the indecisive type, Boss noticed.  
  
"Yes I did. As you know, this is the end of your vacation and Dr. J will be coming later today or tomorrow to give you some physical retraining, depending on how uh… busy he is."  
  
Heero raised an eyebrow and settled back in his chair. "Another student, huh?"  
  
"How did you know?" Boss only looked mildly surprised and a smirk curled his lips. It only proved that this boy was perfect for what he'd been raised for.  
  
"It's just like Dr. J to take something on while I'm gone; he's no more than an obsessive mother," Heero stated harshly. He took a Turkish delight from the ceramic belly of a red elephant.  
  
"So I take it you don't like Dr. J."  
  
"Yeah." He looked up from causally chewing in the back of his mouth. "Is that a problem?"  
  
Boss shook his head. "Of course not. You are entitled to your opinion but–"   
  
"-You do not have freedom of speech; this is not America," Heero finished offhandedly. He met the wrinkled, a bit shocked face of boss with smug Prussian eyes. "Dr. J has a habit to quote you. I just happen to have heard this one a few thousand times."  
  
"Good man," Boss said.  
  
Heero wanted to snort and roll his eyes.  
  
"Now, if we could get down to business," the Boss said abruptly. He waved a Portuguese girl dressed as an Arabic princess in from her shady position in the smoky corner. She appeared with a tray of coffee that almost materialized. "Do you drink coffee?" he asked, taking one.  
  
"No," Heero said. The girl, clearly much older than her bronze tan and large brown eyes suggested, kept giving him weird looks like, 'What is such a young boy doing here? Doesn't he know what he's getting into?'  
  
The Boss drank deeply from his mug and put it down besides a glass tiger.   
  
"A mission?"  
  
"Yes, but not the ones you're accustomed to," Boss informed the lanky teenager. "Much less physical. Political, almost. You're going to need a polish on your etiquette, that's all. And maybe a small weapon, but that would be pushing it a bit."  
  
"Why not send someone in politics?"  
  
"You're fourteen, Heero," Boss said, lifting his jagged eyebrows that reminded him of a bush. "Think about it. I'm sure you're resume includes tactical analyzing."  
  
Heero frowned in his soft features. This man must have gotten a kick at pulling people's legs. He better damn well have fun, because he was on the edge of giving him a rude hit. He darted his eyes about for a second, thinking, and then spilled out fluent Japanese like a fax machine spills paper. "Assuming I'm meeting with a neutral party, this is to make a warm impression, probably on a prominent or rich corporation or family. A young child would be best, taking innocence into account, and any guards wouldn't interfere. A childhood friend. No threat. They wouldn't think of attacking someone so young. I am to meet with the party and get on good terms. Get word for supplies, recruits, or just support. No answering questions that could have an affect later, low profile," he concluded.  
  
Boss nodded satisfactorily.   
  
"Close," he said with a hearty laugh. "So very close. If this were a report, I'd have to give you an A-. Very close."  
  
Heero was getting more and more annoyed by this man's insolence.   
  
"You just about hit the nail on the head. A political figure would be much too old and instantly a suspect in the guard's and public's eye. Not to mention the family themselves," Boss informed. "Lately, we've been getting rumors of the Deuces branching out into other parts of L-2 for support, especially the Italian Mafias. Those rumors were confirmed earlier yesterday. Now it has progressed into an inter-colony thing. A well-known Deuce agent went to L-3 and disappeared from our sources. If it degrades into a race for the colonies for recruits, then the American's do have the upper hand. They have better relations with the Europeans on L-3 and more so than us in L-4 too. As you know, the only colony that truly can't stand most of the Americans is L-5, which we are already considering for recruiting.  
  
"If we can set up alliance with L-4, we will have the upper hand population wise. So, this morning, a conference was set up the most prominent family on L-4, the Winners. We were going to mask it as a discussion of natural resources, but we had a much better idea when we considered you. You, Heero, are to leave all the political issues with Mr. Winner to a stand-in political figure and simply focus on the Winner children. We understand that Mr. Winner has a son and a few daughters around your age. If we can get them on our side, then it will be easy for them to sway their father's opinion to our benefit." Boss sipped on his coffee to hydrate his scratchy throat. "Get all that?"  
  
Heero was suspicious. It sounded okay in words, but code that morally and it rang up red. He wasn't some bastard that was totally insensitive, just mostly. The Japanese boy contemplated all that had been said. "That's fine if it'll go off without a hitch, but," Heero intoned, "isn't it blackmailing? If the Winners suspect anything, you know they won't just sit around."  
  
"Blackmailing? No… Not at all." The insistence in the syndicate leader's voice was masking something, he knew.  
  
He wasn't dumb. He saw it in those constricted black eyes that he completely agreed, but that wouldn't help pressure him into it at all, he knew. So Boss was putting on an act to make sure Heero was confident. Jisatsu would put him in this mission anyway, confident or not.  
  
"If it's not," Heero said with a dangerous tone, "then what am I supposed to 'sway' the children with?"  
  
"Heero… It's nothing like that. Not at all!" Boss was laughing almost. He waved his hand at the sour-faced boy. "Sometimes you are so serious it frightens me, Heero. No, all you have to do is be friends with them. Friends. Don't offer them money or anything, that would be insane. I know this… might be a little out of your range, but you haven't been completely socially deprived, have you?"  
  
The Japanese boy narrowed his Prussian blue eyes. His hand fished through the ceramic red elephant again and picked up a roll of smarties. "You'd be surprised," he snapped coldly, staring at the pale candies before he popped them into his mouth. His lips formed a rare and ironic smile. "You'd be surprised."  
  
The Boss shook his head, rubbing his thinly haired head. The smoke in the room wafted through their visions and Heero couldn't discern the actual expression, but he knew that he'd be laughing at this. Pudgy fingers wiped his face and the Boss looked across the desk and did just what Heero expected: he laughed. "Well, not as much as you think," he replied lightheartedly.   
  
The conversation ended with another professional handshake, less stiff than the first, and a well wishing on the mission. Heero bowed by instinct and was confronted by the same sluts shadily hanging around the walls, puckering their ruby lips and pouting them as they shoved their breasts out onto him as he passed. Coldly, he shoved past and they gave disappointed puppy looks. He was glad to step back into the cold, industrial air of the hall, brushing the rose petals and thick perfume off his white shirt. That man sure had some entertainment lined up for between meetings… disgusting, Heero thought. He was more disgusted to find a plant of red lipstick on the sleeve of his shirt. He was only fourteen! Indifferent, he proceeded down the marble floors and rolled up his sleeves to hide it. Heero didn't go back down his usual route; the people of the office probably would never see their free-working assistant again, that was for sure. Even if he did earn another short vacation, Dr. J would never allow it in the same place.  
  
Hn. He would miss it.  
  



	2. When Horse Sh*t Hits the Fan

Part 2  
WHEN HORSE SHIT HITS THE FAN  
  
  
  
Dr. J came back home to his beloved lab hidden in the grungy, abandoned ghetto of L-1.   
  
The crippled old man slipped off his waterproof coat and closed the door on the rain outside. The door had been unlocked. Suspicious, his prosthetic eyes in the form of green glasses focused on the keys that had been put on the mahogany table in the hallway. The first part of the house was normally furnished, complete with a library, clean kitchen, and even a home theatre. But continue down stairs, it was turned into a laboratory. Dr. J snatched the keys and shuffled down to his lab, which was lighted and even lightly air-conditioned.  
  
He found his first suspect, a young Japanese boy he'd taken on as his new student, in the corner. The old man, grabbing his lab coat on the way, scrutinized the little form in the corner near his office. With his prosthetic claw, he tested the waters by gently tapping the gaunt frame and found that the boy, Yuusuke, was in a deep unconscious state. Some kind of tranquilizer. Obviously not the own boy's doing. He'd taken him up off the streets in Heero's absence and had eased him much more slowly into the crime mindset than his previous subject. There was no way he was adept enough to find the drugs and accidentally swallow them. If so, there would have been evidence, a broken bottle, needle, and an eyedropper maybe. This was obviously a stranger's work.  
  
Dr. J didn't fear a hostile intruder. If death came for him now, it came for him now.   
  
But it didn't add up to a burglar. Even an amateur would have use stronger drugs. Yuusuke would probably wake up in a half hour, at the maximum. He left the boy there and shuffled along past his bubbling experiments and caged animals, into the mechanics room, where he heard the rolling of wheels and metal being struck and contorted. It was the only other large room in the lab, besides the solitary confinement room, medical room, and the small space where Heero slept. He carefully turned the knob on the large metal door he'd installed to stop the spread of a car fire, if one ever happened. It opened up into a brightly lit room with a huge metal suit as centerpiece.  
  
He had a mixed reaction when he saw his first student, lean and fit Heero, positioned under the emerging mobile suit, fixing the self-detonation and engine systems. The boy went on obliviously, but Dr. J knew he was just ignoring him. Poor bastard, he thought, closing the door, he's jealous…  
  
"Heero!"  
  
Instantly, Heero's head snapped to attention. His head was almost wedged between the bulk of the gundanium machine. From this distance, Dr. J could almost see the frown. The old professor folded his arms and waited for him to get up. Rolling out on a wheeled board, Heero staggered up, a bit numb from lying so long, and tried unsuccessfully to wipe off the oil from his skin. He frowned again and walked up, words already forming on his thin lips.  
  
"No excuses!" he snapped. The Professor had to look up to make eye contact now that Heero had growth spurts, but it didn't make him any less malicious. "Straighten up."  
  
Heero did so. Like so many times before in his life, he had to pass the physical. Look an ounce overweight, have a few inches of dormant muscle, anything under the rigid standard would earn him full week of training. His scruffy blackish-brown bangs were disheveled from working on the half-finished suit, his Josh Hartnett/Pearl Harbor tank was stained black along with most of his torso, and he just stared straight ahead like a disinterested racehorse being shoed. Dr. J's prosthetic claw made a whirring as he tipped back his chin. "Straighter!"  
  
Finally, it seemed okay. Dr. J let him relax and suspicious brows framed his piercing green shades. "Explain."  
  
Heero got a stony look. "I told Yuusuke that he didn't know what he was getting into and he had an overreaction. Panic attack. So I gave him a sedative."  
  
Dr. J. didn't buy it.  
  
"You tried to warn him, didn't you Heero? You told him to run."  
  
Heero stood straight as a braced cactus and as abrasive as one. His lips twitched once then fell into silence. There was no way he could stare into those glasses and not give it away in his eyes. Dr. J knew him too damn well; he had his mannerisms and personas memorized. The crippled old man simply snorted and limped over to the tool table. "You can relax, Heero," he said critically over his shoulder.  
  
Heero turned around, wiping the sweat from his greased forehead. He stared at the once great bulk of the "Gundam" he'd been working on for most of his productive life. It had once been in perfect working condition, even painted to a gleam. But a quick dispatch by the best Deuce demolitionists had made quick work of it. Two men and one woman had snuck into the laboratory during the night. Heero remembered not waking, probably because of a hard day of training. Dr. J had come running, as fast as he aged body would allow, downstairs. The metal door separating the mechanics room locked the second Dr. J managed to drag Heero from his bed. The demolitionists had done their work though and faithfully committed suicide to protect the syndicate. The experiment had been completely ruined and they had started over from square one. Sad… Heero'd been looking forward to piloting it.  
  
Dr. J watched Heero stare for a few seconds, and then cleared his throat. "Well," he cooed, "get to work, would you?"  
  
Heero gave him a glare out of the corner of his eye, and then returned to his work.  
  
After five hours, Heero began to lose track of where he was. All the wiring and the gleaming metal slowly began to blur until he could hardly keep his vision straight. He even tripped getting out of the half-wired cockpit and wiped out into cold gundanium. Dr. J sighed and yelled at him to call it a day. The Professor disappeared and he heard the door slam. Had he been watching the entire time? …It didn't' matter. Heero rubbed his face, which had not surprisingly gone numb, and tiredly slipped off the mecha torso. He flipped off the lights, came back to turn on the security system, and then crossed the lab to his small room, or cupboard under the stairs, so to speak.   
  
Heero frowned when he saw that Yuusuke had already found quite a nice spot in his bed. He returned to the cockpit of the Gundam and curled up in the seat for the night.   
  
This was a bitch.  
  
And tomorrow didn't look any better.  
  
  
  
  
  
"Do these shades make me look fat?" The figure vainly posing before him kept scrutinizing his own face through the tinting quality of the glasses. He combed his hair quick with his hand.  
  
The other man just smoked some more.   
  
The younger one, only fifteen but with a body to shame the twenty-five-year-old jocks, turned viciously on him. "I said," he snapped, rolling his eyes, "do these make me look fat!"  
  
"Fat as 'ell," the smoker said in a heavy British accent. He tapped the glowing end of his drug into the floor and rubbed it with the toe of his shoe. "You can barely see your code wit'dat bloody second chin. Ever think about joining Jeeny Craig?"  
  
"Jenny Craig and no," the kid corrected. He soured his lips at him and went back to vainly posing. He tucked his hair into the back of his long black trench coat over a black tank and black jeans. He examined the makeup on his throat. "And you're not supposed to see the code anyway. I think it's such a stupid idea. It's just screaming, 'Come and kill me.'"  
  
The other man laughed, reclining into his chair. "You, my friend, are the one screaming come and kill me."  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"You know what I mean." He puffed once deeply and stretched out his arm. "Even Oprah after five minutes my friend would be screaming for you to shut your cake hole."  
  
The kid shot him a raspberry via the mirror and trotted over to the surveillance cameras on the other side of the dark apartment. The kid slipped into a swivel chair and snatched up the Brit's cup of tea there jokingly as he scanned each blue screen. The older man just rubbed his stubble with a smile as the kid took a spit take, complaining of burnt lips. The other one smiled at his pain and the kid wiped it on the back of his hand. He glanced around the screens again, and found something interesting. He waved the British man over, who sighed and complied.  
  
The kid pointed to a screen that was planted slyly on the doorstep of the Winner's on L-4. The reception was a bit fuzzy but it served it purpose just fine.   
  
The blue light lit on the Deuce's face with a mischievous glow. "They're running be-hiiind…" he taunted, running his finger over the two figures on the doorstep.  
  
  
  
  
Heero's lips were again frowning when the political figure escorted him to the Winner's lavish estate. The sky was padded with misty gray clouds, like damp lint hanging in the sky. A very beautiful analogy, when he thought about it. A pair of shades hid him from the rest of the world, making his pale skin under his scruffy dark bangs him seem like walking dead. Faithfully posing as a son, Heero folded his arms, wishing he had the security of his gun in his pocket. He coldly brushed off a bit of last second advice from the old man besides him, muttering that he was just fine.  
  
The door opened via servant into a large dining room and lobby. A tall, sandy blonde man stood there, Mr. Winner. Heero'd been up in his cockpit early that morning looking up the Winners on his laptop. It didn't hurt to be prepared. A moderately figured girl in a formal dress with the same sandy blonde hair stood beside him, ushering them in with a dazzling smile. To the side, she yanked a blonde boy out from his hiding place. Heero wanted to sigh but the two political figures had already begun laughing and talking causally. Heero's "father" led him in and the two polite children dragged him off into the backyard.  
  
Hello Hell.  
  
It was a short and lavish shortcut they took, straight through the thin dinning room out onto a deck and Heero was almost disappointed that he couldn't see the world-famous Winner mansion. Almost. Sophistication had been off his list of things to be a long time ago. Paintings bored him, but abstract photography was a hobby he wanted to take up enthusiastically. He truly could live without fashion lectures, architecture, or rich trinkets. The two slim blondes darted ahead of him, clearly more excited than he was to pull him into the acres and acres that spilled out like a green gown behind the huge house. With confused faces, they tried to calm themselves and eventually settled back to Heero's nonchalant pace. Wild horses… that's what they were like.   
  
The girl chatted wildly about Heero's visit and twisted her made-up face so much with expression it would have been ugly on any other girl. Lucky for her, she had a way of pulling it off. Heero saw her eyes search for his politely, but lose them somewhere in his shades. He wanted to smile, but then again, he'd been told his smile was like the devil's. No need to scare the shit out of them.  
  
"Hello," she said brightly, "I'm Iria, Iria Winner. How do you do? …You came from L-1, right? You speak Japanese, don't you? Oh, let me try! Konnichiwa! Hajimashite."  
  
"Very good for an anorexic prep," Heero said in Japanese back. Then he smiled faintly and repeated the greeting.  
  
Just like he wanted, the girl was dumbfounded at first. Then her face flushed an angry red when the translation clicked. By now, the shier boy at the side of his sister had opened the polished glass doors to the backyard and had finally summed up the courage to talk. Iria, taking up some of her black gown in her fists, stormed out in front of the two boys to find her place on a lounge chair besides the pool on the cement patio.  
  
"You'll have to excuse her," he said sheepishly. "Iria can be temperamental when it comes to foreigners. Especially if they insult her."  
  
Heero hesitated for a second. He snorted incredulously. "So you understood that too?" he inquired brazenly.   
  
The blonde boy, with his big aqua-blue/green eyes, nodded and followed Heero out onto the patio. "Pretty clear actually."   
  
The Winner son plopped down into a chair around a glass table besides Heero, like he expected a pampered boy to. He'd be damned if this kid had never left L-4, or even his own estate. A tray of coffee and what smelled like tea sat in front of them. Obliviously, they liked to treat guests right.  
  
"So, did your father make you come with?" the boy asked. "I don't like to ever sit in some stranger's house; I'm so afraid of breaking something I can't fix."  
  
Heero generously took a cup of coffee. He still felt beddy and his body was running on cold, so some wouldn't hurt at all. "Well, let's just say it's required. It's not my cup of tea either," Heero replied flatly. When he saw a teacup pressed to the blonde's lip, he wanted to laugh at the pun he'd made.  
  
"You're not like the other Sheep that come here," the Winner kid said.  
  
"Sheep?"  
  
"Oh, I'm sorry," he apologized, running a finger or two through his platinum hair. "Family lingo. Iria and I always call the kids of the political figures that come Sheep because they always get herded around."  
  
"By you two?" Heero asked bluntly.  
  
The boy laughed. Probably a yes.  
  
Heero, his voice locked in his stoic throat, just dragged out of his coffee cup and licked the bitter stuff from his lip. It felt oddly comforting warming his stomach, but then again, it could be the hospitality sinking in. The Winner kids had been a hell of lot more down to earth than he'd pictured. Human. Heero wondered how long he'd be able to keep up the brash and aloof façade.  
  
"There really is something different about you, I just can't put my finger on it," the boy said, almost frustrated, summing up his face. "It's driving me crazy, actually."  
  
"Is it the bastard attitude?" Iria snapped from her lounging spot.  
  
"Iria!" the boy said. "Honestly...''  
  
Heero curled his lips a bit. "It's okay," he said, "I get that a lot."  
  
"That you seem different?"  
  
"No, that I'm a bastard."  
  
Thin blonde eyebrows framed those innocent-looking eyes with confusion. This boy obviously hadn't had nearly the life he had. Imagining what the scarring of underground war would do to him was like Heero playing a psycho ward advertisement in his head. "If you haven't noticed, I can be pretty cold when I want," Heero explain, casting his eyes into his coffee as he took another drink. He offhandedly took off his shades.  
  
"I have." The other boy watched him. After a few seconds of silence as Heero drank, he folded his arms and leaned forward with a flat expression. "I suppose you want to be allies, or are you really what you are?"  
  
Heero looked up, a sense of red-alert lighting up in his head. His eyebrows furrowed and he clinked his cup down. "What do you mean?"  
  
"You're not Mr. Naogaki's son, are you?" A smile lit on his lips, but Heero wasn't sure if it was maniacal as in, 'I've got you, now I'm going to pull out my gun and shoot you,' or if it was just a smile.  
  
Heero yearned for the cold, deadly reassurance of his gun pressing his thigh. His Prussian eyes scrutinized the peach-colored, innocent face for a flaw. Anything to make him feel better. He didn't like going into situations without warning or information. He decided that if this kid had something planned, lying wouldn't make him on any better terms.  
  
"No," he admitted.  
  
"I thought so." The blonde drank from his teacup, but with no threatening look. Actually, it looked like he was about to giggle.  
  
Heero stared at him for a second. It was nearly impossible to figure this kid out. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms. "You…"  
  
"…Have been through this just yesterday," the boy finished, smiling with his eyes closed into his cup of tea. It was kind of an incredulous tilt of the lips. He looked up almost apologetic, shrugging. "I suppose I should have told you straight off the bat. I knew you probably were acting from the minute I noticed your eyes were blue. I saw Mr. Naogaki's real son once when he was six and he had brown eyes. Besides, you're the first Japanese person I've ever seen to have blue eyes."  
  
Heero sighed. /Bitch! /   
  
"You're from Jisatsu right? Maxy warned me that they would send someone today. He came yesterday to talk–"   
  
Heero jerked. His fist came down hard on the table, making the tray clatter. "Maxy?"  
  
He remembered the name, but only vaguely. Something important…  
  
The blonde boy looked frightened. Like Heero'd grown fangs. "Well… that's the name he gave me," he said tensely. "Why? Is it important?"  
  
Heero frowned.   
  
The Japanese boy hid his upset behind glazed over eyes that just numbly took in colors and shapes. Behind them, Heero kept imaging a scarred American waiting for him with a gun somewhere in the Winner mansion, maybe even in his home. He suddenly snapped to attention, noticing that Quatre had already started talking without him.  
  
"…A kid from the Deuces came yesterday, doing what you came to do today. He just wandered up to the door like he had a sleepover with one of my sisters. Of course, one of my sisters did yesterday, and he looked enough like a girl that I let him in.   
  
"He didn't say anything thing so I just left him. I went out to the horse stable and he came up behind me and just started talking. He told me that he was with the Deuce gang and asked if I would support them. You know, become like extended family. He was so sincere about it, I mean; he really looked like he wanted friends, so… I said yes. I said I would back him as much as could, whenever I could," he said. The blonde cocked his head. "… But that doesn't mean–"   
  
Heero held up a finger.   
  
The boy hushed.   
  
"Listen," Heero said reassuringly, "I have no reason to be hostile with you or orders to kill you so don't worry Mr. …Uh, I never got your name."  
  
The blonde boy elatedly flung out his hand to meet Heero's calloused one. "Quatre R. Winner," he introduced with a pearly grin.  
  
"Heero. Hajimashite"  
  
"Just Heero? Is there a last name to that?" Quatre asked humorously.  
  
He shook his head.  
  
"Okay then, just call me Quatre."  
  
"I assume we're on good terms now, correct?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
Heero smiled, hoping it didn't come across as evil as usual. It was nice when he had a few moments to his own devices, bleeding thoughts of gangster life, callow memories of dark rooms and darker situations, and masked humanity all shoved aside.   
  
Fuck Maxy. He could wait. Heero Yuy would be living in the trench coat again soon enough. If the superiors didn't send him investigating after this "Maxy", he would do it himself.  
  
"I'm not saying I have a closed mind. I'll still support you, of course, but you won't earn my trust just by glowering and drinking coffee," he said.   
  
Heero fingered his coffee mug, which he just noticed the gold leaf adorning the lip. His Prussian eyes lifted up. "You mentioned you had horses…"  
  
  
* * * * *  
  
  
The hot, sensual breath of horse clouded in Heero's face, accompanied by the metallic clink of tack jolting around loosely on its body. Dust kicked up by the scuffing motion of the blood bay's hooves swirled in the late evening sun. The afternoon had been overcast thickly, but now the sun was alone in the October orange sky. Heero sneezed once and the horse roughly shoved its muzzle into his hair, snorting impatiently. He smiled smugly and wrapped his fingers around its halter. The name on the bronze plate read Sarava, a typical Arabic name. Heero slipped it off, the horse chewing at its newly freed jaw, then fitted a bridle on him. The blood bay whinnied as Quatre trotted past, already saddled and on his white horse, Sandrock.  
  
"You okay?" he asked, pulling the horse's unruly head back.  
  
Heero pulled the under strap tight. "Fine," he said, tossing his hair a bit. He was surprised how much dust there was in a horse stable the size of a small house. It looked like dandruff floating off his hair.   
  
Quatre's horse shifted under him, yearning its head toward the open field. He titled his head, watching how easily Heero fitted his horse. "Do you have horses in L-1?" he asked, turning his steed so he could face him. "You're going faster with the tack than most of my sisters, and they're out here crooning over the ponies all the time."  
  
"I've had training," he said flatly.   
  
Quatre titled his head. "Really? Horseback riding doesn't seem like a very terrorist thing."  
  
Heero jolted up into the saddle and gathered up the reigns silently. Then, while the horse gnawed on his bit, he gave the blonde a look. "Who said I was a terrorist?"  
  
The Winner son looked flustered. "Oh, I'm sorry!" he said, urging his horse along side Heero's. "It's just that I've been told all my life that Jisatsu is just a desperate terrorist group. You know, by my father and such. He never wanted me to get soft toward your group or the Deuces. He's a very lawful man."  
  
Heero smiled. "And yet you still form alliances with them behind his back."  
  
Quatre nodded sheepishly. "I never said I agreed completely with my father."  
  
They guided their horses, which seemed to flock close to each other while impatiently brushing necks, off of the cemented floor into the lush grass. The horses seemed to know the path and confidently walked toward a pond surrounded by a thick group of trees. The blonde boy simply let the reins lay slack against his horse's neck and Heero caught on and did the same. Their steeds would just carry them where they wanted to go. They'd been there probably many times before.  
  
"So… if you're not a terrorist," Quatre brought up again, "what exactly would you call yourself?"  
  
"Besides a bastard? – Gang member, you know, crime syndicate. Scarface, Mafias, men living off crime …" Heero said nonchalantly, watching the golden sun drown in the silhouette of the upcoming trees. "I was born into this. So I have no choice but to go with it until they let me retire."  
  
"And you hate it?"  
  
Heero nodded. "…Yours? You like it? Or is a phone on a silver platter too much?"  
  
He smiled. "Yeah, I do, but no body's life is perfect. The traveling is great; I get to see more than most people dream of. But I hate the fact that we live in a world where some people, like me, have more money than we care for, and some people have absolutely nothing. I'd like to give it away, but my father insists we could do better good for the colonies by investing it in politics and government," Quatre answered. "He calls my visits to the poor villages 'crusades.'"  
  
"Not a dog's life," Heero said dryly. "Huh?"  
  
"Heero? What exactly do you do… in the syndicate?" Quatre asked.  
  
"You're not going to let me go until you know something, aren't you?" Heero said to himself, relaxing and pulling his feet out of the irons. "Does my life really interest you that much? You've done nothing but poke at it."  
  
The blonde boy sat crooked to face Heero. "I must admit, I'm curious," he said, shrugging his frail shoulders. When he looked at them, the agent saw how easily this boy could die in a rough game like Heero's life. One hand to those shoulders looked like it could snap them. "I've been told one thing, then another. It's hard to tell what's truth and what's a ploy by an enemy of yours. People today get disillusioned easily."  
  
"If you think its all James Bond and leather-interior corvettes, you'd be in for a hell of a surprise," Heero said coldly. He stared ahead, face taking on its usual stony tone.  
  
"Bad?"  
  
Heero looked at him dead in the eye. "Hell."  
  
A glittery look like a child in all the horror movies he'd seen lit in Quatre's eyes. He apologized under his breath.  
  
"Don't take it personally," Heero said, craning his neck under a branch. He shook a leaf from his hair. "That's what I tell everybody," he explained monotonously.   
  
Now they had penetrated the miniature forest and went toward the pond. The horses automatically paused at the water. Quatre smiled at Heero. His hands gathered up his reins subtly. "I'd hold on if I were you," he warned. "They like to race."  
  
Sandrock's ears flattened and he tossed his mane. Heero's horse, Sarava, did the same momentarily. Their hooves were lapped by the water and pawed there. And suddenly, in perfect unison, they both bolted out across the water like horses out of a Derby gate. Heero recovered, as Sandrock pulled out ahead, from almost being thrown backwards. He had to slip back into the saddle again and urged his heels into Sarava's side. Quatre was already across the shallow pond and his horse was laboring up the other side and cutting a sharp corner on the path out, dirt flying from the hooves. He could hear laughing floating back to him and Heero just was more determined. He reminded himself not to get rabid over it, but he was so easily swept up in competition…  
  
He kicked his horse and followed.  
  
The sun had sunk down below the mountains in the distance after the race, which Quatre had won, by default. Sarava had never been the quick one to warm up to strangers, and had thrown Heero once up the other bank, sending him rolling back into the water. The two boys were tired from their bones being jolted as the estate came up into view.   
  
At first, it seemed the way they had left it. The reduced light made it seem like a huge white block with rooms dotted here and there on the outlying platforms. On the other side, Heero could see the familiar red and blue dashed light of cop cars, and could hear the ominous sound of low voices and crying before Quatre even saw anything different. As the horses plodded up the slope, Heero listened faintly to what the blonde was saying. The kid seemed so wrapped up that the words didn't form. He stared at the house, backgrounded by the red-blue flashing.  
  
Quatre noticed.  
  
"Heero? What's wrong?"  
  
The Japanese boy was about to say something, when a ragged-looking Iria ran up, oblivious to her beautiful black dress tearing under her frantic feet. "Quatre!" she screamed.   
  
"Iria?" The blonde boy jolted on his horse as it skittered at his sister's wild approach. If it hadn't been for her elegant jewelry, muted makeup, and purse still clinging to her shoulder somehow, the Jisatsu agent would have mistaken her for a fevered blind woman, flinging her arms at her brother and making wild noises that melted into sobs.  
  
"Iria calm down!" Quatre leaned off his horse until he almost was falling off. His sister's arms were around his small shoulders faster than lightning. Her sobs subsided in the fabric of his shirt and her fingers strained into his skin. Her glossy lips spilled out garbled words. "Iria! Calm down! I can't understand what your saying."  
  
"Daddy! Mr. Naosaki!" She managed to scream out. "Gunshots!"  
  
"What?" Quatre shook his sister's shoulder, trying to snap her out of her craze. "What gunshots? What happened? Are they okay? Iria!"  
  
She pulled away, holding her hand up to her mouth. "They're dead…"  
  
  
  
  



	3. Longview

Part 3  
LONGVIEW  
  
1:03 A.M. : L-1  
  
  
Heero felt like the supposed bastard he was, throwing his clothes into a soaked pile in the corner of the bathroom.   
  
Even after being escorted off the Winner estate by the police five hours ago, he still felt shivers alight on his spine at the sight of the peaceful Quatre just staring with absolutely no soul in his eyes, while he sat in his father's blood. Lifeless, almost. He had gone as limp as a rag doll once the police tried to drag him away from the carnage. Pet Semetary came oddly to mind. The image of a demonic child flying down from the attic door past the hung body of a woman lit more fears in him.  
  
He shook it off and his thoughts bounced back to another grim subject. He had overheard from the police that a mounted rifle set on automatic fire had been secretly planted in the ceiling. No person to get caught and interrogate. Nearly a spotless crime. The gun was loaded with only two shots, probably for Mr. Naosaki and himself, not Mr. Winner. Assassination was a brutal tool of the trade and accidents like this happened...   
  
Heero wanted to wash it all away, obliterate that god-awful expression that was burned into his retinas. The boy flung the gold cross of his neck and into the medicine cabinet. Naked, he stood in front of the mirror in the downstairs bathroom of Dr. J's lab.   
  
The coffee had helped to initiate dark rings under his eyes and the horseback riding made his body crick like a man in retirement. He didn't look like that Enrique Iglesias throwback anymore, just a painfully thin and deadbeat boy with a head of cotton-knotted hair. Heero could barely focus in on his own reflection. Jet lag. And when he did, his left eye winced shut automatically. He was not a pretty sight. Gingerly, he felt at the bones starting to protrude along his body. He hadn't eaten for a few days… forgotten for the sake of the mission.   
  
Heero snatched the mouthwash and filled his mouth twice. Spitting it out, he noticed a considerable amount of blood in the sink along with blue mint wash. Funny, he didn't remember biting his tongue. Then he downed more than his usual amount of painkillers, for tomorrow. Dr. J would get on him viciously for letting Mr. Winner get assassinated. He wouldn't be happy to know that he'd been racing horses in the backyard when he might have prevented the murder. The risk of overdosage didn't faze him; he'd done it before. And Dr. J wouldn't be happy if he lied about it.  
  
After turning on the shower, he leaned over the sink, body glimmering slightly in the reflection from a fine sheen of sweat. For a second, he just stared at his reflection, trying to stone up before the beating Dr. J would give him. A hot shower and maybe a few hours of sleep would help.   
  
A knock. Heero jerked his head toward the thick metal door.   
  
"It's locked," he said.  
  
"…Where's Dr. J?" a feeble voice inquired in Japanese through the steel.   
  
"Gone, Yuusuke," he said callously back. "I wouldn't wish for him back if I were you."  
  
A few seconds passed in absolute silence. Heero, arching his shoulders over the sink, snorted and rubbed the tension from his face. When he heard the boy nervously whimpering, his face soured. "What Yuusuke?"  
  
"Um… what's your name?"  
  
"Heero." He was getting impatient and his water was getting cold again. "What do you want?"  
  
"Was all that stuff you said true?" He could hear cupped breathing against the outside of the door, suggesting an on coming hyperventilation.   
  
"Yeah," Heero said distantly. "Now leave me alone."   
  
A swift kick to the door induced the sound of little sneakers running through the cracks. A frown lit on his lips and finally he got into the shower. The water was sadistically cold. Shaking, he dove to the front of the shower, taking short refuge where no water fell. He toyed with the temperature, and it fickly wavered from scalding to cold. He decided on the scalding one, but it had turned artic in that few seconds of turning the knob. Setting with cold, Heero fiercely washed his hair, trying to scrape the memory out of his head. He almost washed his body raw. After getting satisfactorily clean, he got dressed again left for the Gundam cockpit.  
  
Heero was exploring the communication system for errors, since he'd just finished rewiring it, when he got the email. Sitting facing the raftered ceiling in the seat, he growled as he rummaged for a new wire to connect the monitor. The computer itself had beeped, alerting him to a message. It shouldn't have been there; no one gave out the address for this place. Besides, he'd put on a level 6 block, enough to send most hackers clenching their head. Heero suspiciously raised one eyebrow and rushed to connect it. When it sparked and the screen flickered blue, the email intelligently opened itself up. Someone capable had sent it.  
  
'yo. be awake at 4:00. a.m. meet me outside the L-1 airport. hill. it's about the winner incident. be there or i will sever all support from quatre. sincerely, maxy.'  
  
Heero frowned.  
  
And almost smiled at the same time.  
  
He adjusted the wiring for a few minutes then gracefully climbed out of the Gundam and jumped to the floor. His shoes made a loud noise connecting to the cement and he glanced at the closed door of his… or now Yuusuke's room. When no movement caught his eye, he went to the weapon closet. A devilish smile lit his lip as he easily hacked into the lock with the push of a few buttons. Dr. J was underestimating him. One of these days he'd hack into that bastard's personal stuff and erase all his porn.   
  
His dark hair blew around his temples as the door flung open and revealed only a dark corner where all his guns and ammunition should be. He blinked for a second, wondering if he was seeing things, then dove in. Heero angrily rummaged through empty boxes, cases, and a few fugitive shells. Cardboard flew as he stormed back out, glaring around the empty mechanical room. Where the hell had it all gone?! The lanky boy felt for his colt, hoping he'd forgotten it in his pocket, but that was empty too.   
  
Someone had messed with it.  
  
Suddenly, his laptop snapped to life. His Prussian eyes locked on it from across the room, and instantly felt his fist tighten up. Heero jerked up and ran over to his computer.  
  
"You've got—" Heero hit the mute button before that annoying voice could finish.  
  
"Mail, I know," he muttered to himself. Another self-opening message sprung to life.  
  
'un-uh! i know you. come unarmed and alone. sorry if we upset you about all your cork guns… follow the previous orders and you'll have them back fine. and don't think you'll get away with any funny shit. if we can put cameras in the winner's dining room, we can put them in your house too. weapon closet, doorstep, you name it. i think you might wanna take that one down in the downstairs bathroom too. be there. u know where. ciao.'  
  
Heero frowned. He slammed the screen down on his laptop in a rage. There was no possible way they could have infiltrated… was there? Security, himself and Dr. J, the syndicate, how could they possibly have gotten in? But then again, there was the event of the first breaking in, when the Gundam had been destroyed. That always had the chance to happen again if it happened once. And they had known when he checked the weapons closet. Heero massaged his temples for a second. He was constantly hunted by wicked throbbing when something happened like this. It was just automatic. If his brains started working, they started pounding instantaneously.   
  
Standing beside his abused computer, he glared around any suspicious corners for a camera. Rafters, drawers, boxes… everything seemed like a shell for the betraying.   
  
"What do you want from me?" he asked out loud, flashing dangerous eyes to anything that looked out of place. Everything looked different now, when he thought about it.  
  
To his surprise, his battered laptop cried out behind him. Another message. Heero pried the metal from metal and lifted the damaged screen up to light. His already aggravated frown seemed to just deteriorate when he saw the email screen flicker and change into a fresh message.   
  
'ah so you figured out we've got it bugged too, huh? smart boy, aren'tcha? all i want is what is deserved. come to the airport. everything will be explained there.'  
  
"Damn you." Heero said bitterly.   
  
In instant messenger speed, another response was relayed.   
  
'yeah fuck u too buddy. have a good night.'  
  
The Japanese boy's lips lit on a caustic smile. He leaned into the computer screen, slammed it down and turned to face the echoing room behind him. He was laughing to himself for giving in.  
  
The plan was written on a tight schedule, as tight as monkey's ass. If he wasn't going to get caught he needed to get this over with. It was 1:19 presently, after angrily disconnecting the camera he'd found in the bathroom, and he had roughly three hours to get to the airport. Three hours to storm over the mistake he was probably making. Three hours to find and confirm Dr. J's position, so he wouldn't walk in on Heero's leaving. The crippled old professor usually came home from wherever the hell he went at roughly 5:30, but that wavered and anyway it wasn't a lot of time.   
  
Get there, get back.  
  
Yeah, like that was gonna happen. But Heero decided to do it anyway. The boy took his shades, still horribly fresh with the smell from the Winner bedroom, and slipped them on. His nose scrutinized the scent and it was just as vivid as ever. He snuck into his – Yuusuke's room and hoped his clothes hadn't been thrown out to make room for the new; he hated shopping. Opening the door, he saw the lump fast asleep in his bed, in his blanket, even sleeping in one of his shirts. Heero walked over and lifted up some of the heavy, t-shirt fabric to see that pudgy innocent face smeared in sleeping drool.   
  
"Poor lil' bastard," he whispered.  
  
Heero rummaged through the pile of his own clothes shoved carelessly under the bed and pulled out a new shirt. He slipped his off and slipped the next one on effortlessly, and tossed the old onto the kid's head. He snorted and shut the door behind him.  
  
  
  
2:07 A.M. : L-4  
  
  
  
Maxy watched Quatre sleep where he had collapsed drunkenly into his lap.   
  
Even now, his pain didn't escape him. He saw his flushed-pink pug nose scrunch in his sleep and his cheeks tighten around his teeth. His calloused hand went to the back of the blonde head and he tried to pacify the pained look away. In the moonlit room, the white glow pouring in through the glass door only pronounced the black rings under his eyes and the flamed tear streaks. Rocking the drained boy in his lap, his rage only seemed increase more at the pathetic sobs Quatre gave in his nightmares. The bastard that did this to his friend would pay and burn in the pits of hell if he had anything to do with it.   
  
And he did have something to do with this. He could get revenge, and as long as he was mad enough not to listen to his conscious, he'd get it any way he could. Maxy's leg slowly numbed but he didn't want to wake up Quatre. It'd taken an hour of pacing for him to finally succumb to his tiredness and then a few more minutes of frantic bawling, and one bottle of whiskey slipped into his water for him to actually fall asleep and Maxy didn't want to repeat it. Besides, he didn't have any more alcohol on him.  
  
Maxy frowned and took a fist in the face as he flailed in his sleep. Quatre grumbled under his breath, then began another bout of mumbling. His arm would occasionally reach out for something across the carpet, and the Deuce titled his head to see what. A pillow. He reached forward for him, since he was missing it by a few inches and saw that his blue eyes were open in a sort of sleepwalk. Maxy grunted as Quatre kicked him, trying to get to the pillow, and he got up. The blonde curled up and fell asleep again on the floor.   
  
"Poor kid," he said to himself. "Does he even notice he's sleeping on the floor?"  
  
Maxy took in the more relaxed face of his friend and was satisfied. He glanced around the relatively empty guest room and looked for a mattress in the closet. There was one, hidden under a few unused ceiling boards. He silently dusted it off and pulled it out. Then, grunting, he lifted the boy up by his shoulders and legs onto the mattress. Quatre just rolled in his sleep once he was put down over the other side back onto the floor.   
  
He laughed. "Alright, I tried," he said to himself. "If he wakes up complaining, it's not my fault." He raised his hands above his head and shrugged.  
  
Maxy went to the door and peaked down the hall. There were still blaring lights and sirens and walkie-talkies and analyzing voices annoyingly loud from the other side of the house. The lanky boy ducked his head back in and shut the door. "Hm, I'm not using the door this time, I guess."  
  
Luckily, Quatre's balconies didn't have the best of security. All he needed was the rope he kept in his inside back pocket of his jacket to get up and down pretty easily. The Deuce turned slightly in the moonlight and smiled at the sound of content snoring in the background. From where he was, the darkness was too much for him to see the inside of the room. His hand slipped in and out of his black jeans and he slipped on some leather gloves, black of course. He hooked the metal around the railing and let the rope fall to the ground. A few rabbits scattered from the sudden movement back into the rosebushes surrounding the house. He grabbed the rope and leaped off the balcony, freefalling for a minute before he gripped the rope between his hands and slid down it to a smooth stop.   
  
He liked showing off, even if no one was watching. He glanced at his watch and started off for the airport. He had to be in L-1 in two hours.  
  
He didn't hear the door to Quatre's room open.  
  
  
  
  
5:34 A.M. : L3   
The Previous Day  
  
  
  
Damn tabloids…  
  
Not only were they the most degrading things to a celebrity, they were fucking expensive…  
  
Trowa would not be happy about this, he knew. But he'd be angrier if he found out a month after it happened. And since he knew the man wasn't the chatty type, with very few friends and practically no technology to his name, he'd thought he'd tell him. The boy walking down the middle of the abandoned street cradled The Star under his arm. In his other hand he had his strong tea for the morning, half finished and spitting steam against the artificial sun of L-3. It was awfully quiet today, even for a sleepy Norwegian town at the less populated end of the colony like this. No dogs ventured the streets for scraps of lutefisk, no old men were rocking their chairs besides the store doors to yell at him. That he didn't miss. But it did unnerve him. Totally silent almost. Typical Trowa territory.   
  
Moving briskly with no need across the street, he came to a run-down three-room house on the opposite side of the railroad tracks, in the grove of pine trees. There he saw his antisocial friend, amusing himself mildly with catching spiders from his porch rafters. From down the dirt road, the lanky Asian boy could see his muscular top torso lost up in the wooden beams, while the stick legs balanced on an old hillbilly-looking chair. A jelly jar filled with writhing black spiders sat on the railing.   
  
The boy folded his arms a bit and smiled. "Catching spiders? What next, watching grass grow? Trowa, my friend, you are becoming very domestic. Don't tell me you cook with an apron. That would be too much."  
  
A brunette head craned out from the porch rafters. A big green eye watched him from beside his unibang. "Wufei. Strange to see you here, but pleasing," he stated. He looked at his watch. "And at five thirty? The sun's only been up for fifteen minutes. I haven't even eaten."  
  
"Yeah, well, it's still dark in L-5 but the tabloids haven't wasted anytime in kicking your old flame when he's down," Wufei said almost flippantly as he stepped onto the porch and sat down in a chair. The word 'old flame' had instantly captured his attention, no matter how jaded it seemed. Trowa looked at him with those stoic eyes for a moment, took the spider in his hand currently and let it go toward some fresh beetles, and sat down also.   
  
Silently, the Chinese boy passed the newspaper to Trowa, who didn't bother to unfold it. He watched the emotions play across his face as his friend read it. First oblivion. The usual show of nothing that the world saw from him came first. Then a bit of surprise, then anger, and finally disturbance took hold of his face. "Quatre." He looked up. "His father died? So… this is where it all leads to, huh? 'Quatre Winner Breakdown, Father Killed, Where Do His Loyalties Lie?'"  
  
"I thought you'd like to know."  
  
Like it?" He frowned. "I hate this. He never wanted so much media attention…"  
  
Wufei folded his arms. "You would know, wouldn't you?"  
  
"Yeah, the whole thing between us was supposed to stay between us, not between us and the rest of the world." Trowa sighed, his exposed green eye flickering dismally across the paper. "I miss him."  
  
His companion nodded and rubbed at his eyes. It was early. Even too early for him. "So… How long?"  
  
The brunette looked up to him. He got a suggestive look. "How long is what?"  
  
How long is it since you last saw him, Trowa? Did you ever talk to him again?" Wufei tilted his bold eyebrows as if to say, don't bullshit me.  
  
The unibang said nothing at first, slowly looking over the tabloid again before setting it on the table and settling his young bones back into his chair. "About nine months now," he admitted. "I was too afraid of ruining his life to keep on with him. So I moved here, where no one had heard of me. I tried once to write him, but I was afraid they'd find it and just expose it to death. So I burned it."  
  
"You know its not good to run away from problems," Wufei said in a wise tone.  
  
"Hn. I know you're right, I just don't think I'll listen anyway," he replied with a smart-ass tone.   
  
"You don't fool me Trowa," the Chinese boy said, playing with a spider that escaped to see on the arm of his chair. "You still love and lust after that kid, and you aren't the unfaithful type."  
  
A few moments passed before Trowa let a bittersweet smile let on. "So what type do you think I am?"  
  
"The persistent kind. You must still have a picture of him, don't you?"  
  
Trowa said nothing; he just sat in his chair with a stoic look. Maybe a yes. Maybe a no. Wufei didn't know for sure. It'd been a while since he'd talked with his friend and his signals had changed.  
  
"Surely you won't give up on him?" The tone in his voice was incredulous. There was no way it was just some teenage infatuation. If Wufei ever saw destiny, it was those two.  
  
"Of course not," the brunette assured him. "I'm just being wise. Waiting out the storm, even if I have to do it away from him. Quatre got pretty on edge through the first bout with the reporters. You know, what he did –" His green eyes flashed up. "– you read about it."  
  
Wufei closed his eyes. "How could I forget?"  
  
"This is getting depressing. You want to come in? I'm not Quatre when it comes to cooking, but you look like your getting pretty thin." Trowa stood up and stuffed the tabloid with the picture of his old boyfriend sobbing in a ball on his floor into his jacket and grabbed the jar of spiders.  
  
"No thanks." Wufei flicked the spider off his hand and stood up also. "I think you got the message."  
The brunette silently nodded.   
  
Before Wufei lifted his hand to shake a goodbye, he paused. "I think you're right to wait this out. But don't wait forever. Quatre's sent me too many letters asking about you. Way too many."  
  
Trowa smiled and they shook hands. Watching the slim figure of his friend stroll down the dirt road to the paved one, he was reminded of his 'dark days' with Quatre as he knew them, always ducking the media, always wondering if that hurt look in his koibito's eyes meant he wanted to pull the plug, always meeting in short-lived secrecy. His green eyes took on their monotonous disinterest again, as he witnessed another of his Chinese friend's anger fits at the lack of taxis in this 300 people town. Inside he smiled, but didn't feel motivated enough to let it onto his face. As he sat down, the image o Wufei had disappeared across the street, probably for a few more years. He never really stayed in contact with his friends, and Trowa began to regret it when he went to sleep that night.  
  
After an uneventful day and after a measly dinner of lutefisk for the fifth day straight, he fell into a sick kind of daze, like after eating a thousand pounds of your favorite candy. And that sickening fish was definitely not his candy… nothing was anymore. He didn't want to sleep; it was only eight o clock but his moaning stomach forced him otherwise. The lanky boy dumped his chipped dishes into the equally chipped sink and let it sit there with about twenty of its brothers. He'd wash them later, just like he'd clean the house later. Later seemed to be the only thing he had time for, now that he had all this freetime. He needed no job; the money Quatre'd transferred as a present to his bank account promised him no more financial problems. His hands found his pockets again and he wandered up to his room upstairs. It was early to go to bed, but it didn't matter. He had nothing to do in the morning.  
  
When his socks came off at the foot of his cot, he began to miss the sound of another human voice. It would have comforted him so much just to hear the Chinese man yell at him or something like that, to have Quatre giggle and sweet talk him. He shook his head and insisted that he'd live without it.  
  
The light swung rhythmically over his head, flickering with disrepair, until Trowa reached over and shut it off. Still in his day clothes, he decided he'd wait for morning to shower and change. Even if he wasn't peach smelling, there was no one but himself to complain of it. He fell backwards into the pillow. It was made of goose feathers and he had to pick one out of his hair. He held it in front of his face for a second, and then tossed it off into the black somewhere. His bed creaked under his measly weight and he curled up like a cat against the wood wall. But even as his body slipped into sleep, his eyes kept open and his thoughts still kept the light on in his head.  
  
The words of Wufei kept coming back again and again and he could picture the tone in his voice perfectly. After a few seconds, he looked up at the wall a few feet up. Even through the evening darkness, he could see the outline of his only picture frame in the house. He pulled it down and considered the happy faces in the picture again, coupled with his friend's words of advice.   
  
Trowa bit his lip.  
  
Maybe just once… No. Quatre would get hurt! But how much more hurt could he get? After all, his father had died… the least he could do was offer sympathy. Somewhere in his mental argument, he fell asleep.  
  
The next day he dressed with less attention than usual and he thought it was his lack of sleep he'd gotten thanks to a sudden attack of insomnia. But when the sun finally brought decent light to his room and he turned to see the mirror, it gave him a sort of awakening slap. It didn't surprise him that he looked like shit under his clothes, he'd been on a sort of forgetful starvation diet where he'd wander off into the misty woods out back and forget the concept of meals completely. It had happened enough to trim quite a few percents of total body fat off him. His skin seemed fine and tanned from all the outdoor time, but it only accentuated his dark bags that hadn't gone away. He certainly didn't seemed presentable to his koi now. But it was his choice of clothes that tipped him off maybe he should anyway.   
  
Pink. He didn't even know he owned pink. He even doubted that anyone in the whole town besides him had a pink shirt. And white pants. Quatre clothes. Perhaps he should see his old boyfriend before he became him…  
  
Trowa got clothes that were more characteristic of him, a black sweater with wide cuffs and his trusty Levi's. They may have been a few years old and tight at his hipbones, but they had grown accustomed to his hard-to-shop-for form. Besides, it was the pair he'd worn on their engagement… and the day of the break up, too, now that he thought about it. He caught his frown in the mirror by accident and decided he looked better without it. A breakfast of Cheerios sufficed him for the moment and he wandered back out onto his porch. He briefly passed by his calendar then scribbled with a pencil off the number 2 in the month of August.  
  
Then it was time to walk.   
  
Walk to the airport.  
  
  
He hadn't expected there to be so many cops on L-4. It'd taken him the entire day and far into the night to get here, and this only was going to slow him down. He didn't expect to get stopped by security a mile away. The incident had obviously been more strenuous than the press let on. He could recognize tons of analysists, their clipboards clutched like crying children to their breasts, rushing back and forth, dashed by the appearing and disappearance of investigators with beer guts and young bodies alike. He didn't expect too many women though. With Quatre's large amount of sister at close hand, he'd have all the feminist support he could survive.   
  
"Excuse me young man but visitors are not allowed. This is an official crime scene and you could be in danger right now. Please leave," commanded a plain-clothes cop.  
  
"I know that." Trowa's face hardened into a front. "I need to go in, immediately. I'm close to Quatre Winner."  
  
The annoyance in the cop's voice was eminent. "I don't know where you should be, kid, but you're not supposed to be here. Go home and go to bed. The last person I could let you see is him. He's under serious trauma right now." Still convinced he was some smart-ass punk, the man reached forward and attempted to push him back toward the road.  
  
Trowa caught his arm firmly.  
  
"That's why I need to see him. I need to see Quatre."  
  
"Hey, you're his ex, aren't you?" The cop almost sounded incredulous. But the disgust was there too. "Now I'm definitely I'm not going to let you in. Come on, you're coming with me. I'm taking you downtown. I think you qualify for some short questioning."  
  
Trowa tore away. "I think not."  
  
"Come on kid. Don't get cocky. All we need from you is a few questions. You are close to him, no?"  
  
"Yes. I don't deny that."  
  
"Good. Then you can come for questioning. Short. No big deal. Water bottles if you're thirsty, even. Maybe a nice meal if you're polite. You want to help your little lover, don't you? Of course you do. Now, help us help him." The cop again grabbed for his arm but the slim boy dodged easily. "Are you resisting arrest?"  
  
"I didn't know I was being arrested. I shouldn't be."  
  
"Dammit, you're the first kid to get on my nerves you know. I said, it'd help you little friend if you come with me for questioning. We just want information… Or do you not want his father's killer to be caught, huh? Did the breakup leave you a little angry? Come on now. You seem bright… enough. You could have planned this don't you think?"  
  
"That sounds a lot like a threat."  
  
"No threat."  
  
Trowa glared a bit, taking in the wrinkled features of this bent-over beer drinker. "Move aside, please," he said, gritting it through his teeth. The white flashing in the night made him look quite like an angry wolf growling a warning.  
  
"I don't—"  
  
The plain-clothes cop's assistant, who kept shouting across a cop car at him that he had a call from the senator, broke up the standoff abruptly. He turned. "Not now, I got a punk to handle!"  
  
"But he says it's urgent."  
  
"Jesus, those politicians, can't they brownnose somewhere else when I'm busy?! Just a second!" The cop turned but the green-eyed boy had eluded his problem by leaping up into the tree branch above him. A smile lit his lips slightly at the bewildered man and he made his way over the streams of cops crowding the road leading up to the Winner Estate by going from tree to tree. Overhead, he caught glances of the night sky, but when he finally climbed over the gate via a towering elm branch and dropped into the right wing balcony, it was beautiful. It was a pitch-black background, like ones on the clearest nights on Earth, dotted with crystal white lights. It seemed superficial, like the backdrop of a movie, but it was beautiful nonetheless.   
  
He weaved his way through the dark hallways, pausing like a cat at the stairway, lit by the chandelier and echoing with the sound of cops busy at work in summit meetings around the conference table. The second floor, directly below him, was busied by the sound of detectives investigating the scene of the crime, which went through the floorboards below him. The smell of the familiar carpet and the ghostly imagery of the impressionist paintings brought back a sense of exhilaration to him, putting him in the same shoes of an old man somehow again experiencing his youth. His body needed no directions; once past the stairway where he might be heard through, Trowa ran silently to the door he had opened time and time again to see a pair of loving arms awaiting him.  
  
It was empty.   
  
Trowa cursed at the emptiness of Quatre's room. He must have moved, because he instantly noticed the pictures strewn across the floor. The entire place smelled thickly and sweetly of violin rosin and wood. The slim boy paused only a second at the doorway, before shutting it silently and moving on. He scouted the other doors silently, just cracking them open one by one and silently cussing as each one turned up empty. Perhaps they had moved Quatre to a safer place or one of more comfort and used the ploy that he was still here for security during the move? Then he'd be lost again. He had to get to Quatre and apologize before it ate him alive in the form of a bored existence in a wooden cottage on L-3.  
  
Finally, he came to the last bedroom on the floor. Hopefully, he hadn't decided to sleep on the second or first floors; he couldn't risk being seen. His hand wrapped around the knob and he swallowed calmly in a dry throat. He was confronted by moonlight, surprisingly bright, poring in an open balcony and the starkness of an empty white room.   
  
Well, not completely empty.  
  
Quatre was sleeping on a mattress, no sheets or anything of the sort, clutching tightly to a pillow. It had been pulled out quite sloppily, judging by the rotated position it was in. It wasn't aligned with anything in the room. His pale skin and light hair made him seem like a pure white ghost. Or an angel, depending on whether he was still accepting of their relationship. Unlike his normal sleep, Trowa could see him tossing from nightmares and his fevered looking face muttering into the sweaty pillow. A concerned look came across him without thought. He walked over silently and crouched down in front of his koi, blocking the moonlight. His green eyes recognized that face instantly and he felt his peace return.  
  
He smiled.  
  
Quatre looked so innocent in his angst and even though the cuteness of the look brought him to a smile, it truly hurt him to see him hurt. His body reminded him suddenly that he was tired. It must be late into the night, he thought drowsily. Trowa stood up and ducked through the door briefly. He returned a few moments later, Quatre of course oblivious to everything, with a blanket from a nearby guest bedroom.   
  
The tall Latin boy found a place on the mattress besides the nightmare-tormented blonde and yanked it up around first Quatre's shoulder, then his. Subtly, he moved his arms under his koi and under his arm and linked them around his fragile-feeling chest. Trowa felt completely at home, fitting his chin gently against Quatre's neck, and curling up to him like a child to a heat blanket. He watched the sometimes irregular rise and fall of his chest with secretly ecstatic green eyes. Trowa breathed out a breath of relief that his love finally stop tossing in his sleep and actually reacted to his presence. From his flushed lips, he heard him murmur, this time in a warm, buttery fashion and cuddle up to his chin. His white skin was hot from alcohol and Trowa mildly smiled at the fact his koi had drunk something stronger than tea.  
  
"Goodnight, Quatre," he whispered into the blonde's ear.  
  
"Hmmmnn," was the half-conscious reply Quatre uttered. But suddenly, he was fully conscious. Big blue eyes snapped open in stalker-movie fashion, dashed with momentary panic, and he turned roughly, about to scream. Trowa didn't move.   
  
"Trowa?" He sat bolt upright. His voice echoed the walls a bit loud, so he whispered. "Trowa, what the hell are you doing here? You are going to get—"   
  
"Shush. You're going to get me caught, Quat. I'm sorry if I surprised you."  
  
From how his koi was breathing, it sounded like he was about to hyperventilate. "How… How… The guards… they—Guns! Police!"  
  
"It's okay. I'm fine." Trowa sat up as well. "You know that cops can't stop me."  
  
Obviously stressed, Quatre kneaded his bangs repeatedly, his blue eyes searching Trowa's face for an answer he knew he wouldn't get without talking. He blinked and sighed, arching his shoulders in a exhausted fashion. The blonde boy relaxed and let his body sag for a minute. "Why did you come?"  
  
"This—" The tabloid was laid down between them. "—and you look like you need comforting."  
  
Quatre didn't even pick the paper up; he'd seen it. He cast his eyes away, shamed by being played by the paparazzi, and rested his arms on the knees he curled up. "You shouldn't have… and that's nothing. You should have heard the things they said to my face. That I was sleeping with the enemy, you know?"  
  
"Were you?" Trowa asked suggestively, his lips instantly forming a tilted smile of sarcasm.   
  
"No." Quatre obviously hadn't picked up on the humor in that. His blue eyes finally met his. "You shouldn't of come. It's a waste of your time, you could be doing a lot of good for someone else, Tro—"  
  
"Or, I could do even more good for you."  
  
"You don't have to."   
  
"I want to. If I still was upset, would I have come?"  
  
"No." The blonde buried his face into his knees, praying silently for his emotions to hold back just once, dammit. "No… you wouldn't." The latter was directed more toward himself.  
  
"Quatre."  
  
"What?!" he nearly screamed back. "What could you still want from me? I have nothing! I don't deserve you… you… for being so damn nice! And what did I do when I had a little pressure on me? I freaked! — I hurt you because I was cowardly, Trowa! You don't deserve me so just leave, okay? I'm fine."  
  
Trowa didn't budge an inch. His hand rested on Quatre's shoulder, despite the cornered-animal looks his blonde koi shot him in confusion. He didn't even have to think. He let his face open up with a reassuring smile. "You're absurdly cute when you lie, not to mention when you're mad." He laughed to himself. "You know that?"  
  
Quatre's lips moved and parted slightly, but made no sound. His marble-shaped blue eyes were framed by confusion, then slowly, serenity. "So… you're not mad? About the incident?"  
  
Trowa shook his head, breathing out heavily. His hand gripped the blonde's and put it up to the side of his face. "See? All healed. No hit or smack could make me stop loving you." He smiled, even if it was his shy one. "…No, I'm not mad."  
  
"It feels good to hear you say that."  
  
"It feels a lot better to say it finally. And now, Wufei won't have to be so worried." Trowa collapsed back on the pillow. Quatre smiled.   
  
"So he talked to you to." The blonde surpressed the urge to shake his head, and laid down, knowing he'd need it with all the stress he'd been through. All the love from Trowa couldn't erase the hangover he was going to have.  
  
"You have been busy, haven't you?"  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"The cops may be dumb, but they're thorough. They mentioned you had two people over in the last two days. Wufei, Mr. Nagosaki's son, and some unknown person."  
  
"Trowa, I swear, it's not like you think."  
  
The brunette snorted and wrapped an arm around his koi's waist. "I wasn't thinking it." He again fell in the position he'd been in, this time enjoying it more. "By the way, Wufei said you'd sent him letters, but he didn't tell me that he'd visited you. It was mentioned in the tabloid."  
  
"Wufei's complex. I think he really wanted to see a couple succeed together after Sally's death. He's still recovering from that," Quatre said passively; sleep already clawing at his eyes. He reached up and guided Trowa's hand to wrap around his stomach. "He's living vicariously through us, in a way."  
  
"Hmm. Your wisdom never ceases to amaze me."  
  
Quatre smiled playfully. "That's what you get for falling in love with an empath." The blonde smiled broadly, with absolute sincerity. "Thanks for coming back, Trowa."  
  
Trowa murmured a happy guttural noise. "You know I can't live without you. You're more addictive than drugs you're so perfect, so intelligent and sweet… and you smell wonderful." Trowa's voice slowly lost its emotion, signaling sleep.   
  
Quatre looked over his shoulder to the calmed face pressed against his neck, and smiled again.  
  
"'Just Say No'," he quoted with mirth. And fell asleep.  
  



	4. Judas Kiss

Part 4  
JUDAS KISS  
  
  
3:32 A.M. : L-1  
Present Day  
  
  
He wasn't sure if he'd just knock him out or if he should prepare himself for a real fight. If it was a fight at all, he was sure it'd be one hell of one. Feast or famine. Even now, after buffing up quite a bit from his gangly preteen faze, he wasn't sure how easily he'd keep this guy down. The skylights burning into his retinas from staring blankly at it didn't even snap him from his nervous millings. It was like some drug he'd accidentally inhaled, fret-crack. It scared him shitless to feel that wrenching fear in his stomach untamable and growing, just at the thought of the confrontation he'd voluntarily pulled himself into. From what the secret camera in the bathroom had provided him, Maxy knew this guy had the only physique better than his. That didn't assure him.   
  
With his boots propped on the trash-strewn dashboard, his numb violet eyes glanced to the streetlight he'd parked next to, his hand mechanically feeding himself Milkduds and his mind crucifying him with phobia. Another Milkdud found a death path down his throat to his bitching stomach. It did him no good to die on an empty stomach, but then again… Dr. G would probably stuff the cardboard box down his throat then make him puke up the rest of the candy if he ever got caught. The whole agent thing with the syndicate was bad enough but the banning of sugar, especially for Maxy, got him in a pissed off mood. So the first thing he did upon exiting the shuttle from L-2 was buy out the nearest store's supply of Milkduds. If he didn't finish them all, he'd leave them in the stolen pickup truck and just run it off into some river.  
  
Dr. G was strict. He remembered one of the less violent but just as threatening episodes in the belly of the warehouse that had been converted to the cafeteria for a small group of recruits, including himself. The memory was so fresh, it was just the same as if he'd pulled it from a file and had seen it for the first time, and strangely, known it forever. Maxy shivered, wondering what other horrible memories he'd retained as clearly as this. As he remembered, it was almost like being back there.  
  
Training camp.  
  
It was raining outside. A thick, heavy rain that suffocated any thoughts of sun for a few days and drenched even the flitting birds in the canopies of trees. He didn't mind though, he remembered. All his classes were focused on mental training and public infiltration techniques. Watching the older agents, who were above him five or six years and 120 pounds of lean muscle, straining in the mud while a drill sergeant screamed 'Pussy!' and 'Fruitcake' and 'Motherfucking Nothings' in their ears made him appreciate the roof over his head, and the years of cushion between them. It'd be a while before or if he made it that far in the 'association.'   
  
Crime and the crime syndicate to him were strange. He didn't understand why the men who wanted this money and riches so much just didn't do it themselves. Why did they lay their trust so fool heartedly into these kids? I mean, they taught them so precisely that they were probably better than the twenty year veterans were right now. A kid, if only adequately trained, could probably scam a good crime and escape punishment to start his own syndicate, if he still had that kind of blood in him.   
  
Honestly, the kid codenamed Maxy had a fierce distaste for anything like this, but it had been bred and beaten into him so much it was inevitable. The other kids didn't understand though. It was all a fun, exciting game of spy and don't-get-caught; a life promising cars and guns and girls in the future.  
  
They didn't understand. They didn't have the mafia pressing guns to their heads already. They weren't the head of the class, the top agent expected to just embrace a life of cold-hearted murder and illegality. They didn't understand just how serious it was. He'd already been on low scale missions, and he'd been beat into the ground with bullets and fists, and they didn't believe his stories of sleepless nights and paranoia. The only kids who grasped a little of their doom were the ones who'd noticed Maxy's often violently bruised body, pocked by the scars of still-healing bullet wounds, sometimes in the showers, sometimes when he'd reveal it to them.  
  
And that thought brought his chain of thought to the kid voted 'Most Flippant' and 'Biggest Slacker.' Luigi. It was a game to him, no more harmful than a day at school. He broke the rules just to see the wrinkles in Dr. G's face crease like a bulldog.  
  
That day had simply pushed him off the edge.  
  
Dr. G entered unceremoniously. Maxy was one of the only ones to notice, or at least, it seemed that way. Stupid ole bastard was losing his touch. Sometimes he'd just appear behind him when he'd only turned a second before and smack him upside his head for something he was going to do. His fork laid in his dish of slop, Italian slop, but nonetheless slop. His drill sergeant had abused him yesterday, and his stomach growled a fierce warning that it would wretch if he ate too much. So he had taken a bite, and hope he hadn't pushed it too far. He'd live on it. Today, he didn't feel like chatting with any of the guys. They were ravenous from their less strenuous yesterday. He, as the top agent, got a grade upward of treatment. Where they had run an obstacle course with weights strapped on, he had done the same, live-fire style.   
  
Maxy traced the old man's journey, weaving around the fringe of the makeshift cafeteria. His arched shoulders and large, oddly protruding hair, like an old dog, were alternately hidden and revealed as kids laughed and moved, exchanging food and seats, laughing. Maxy's right eyebrow came down. What was he up to now? He folded his legs Indian style, and then craned his gaunt body forward past his lunch mate for the day, the voluntarily mute kid Gary. Dr. G had suddenly disappeared into a group of kids, and with his short stature, it was hard to pick him from them.  
  
He frowned. "What the hell…" he murmured.   
  
Dr. G was poised over Luigi. In the second that he'd lost track of the old professor, he'd gotten all the way across the cafeteria with the speed of someone a twelfth his age. Crinkled old hands wringed over Luigi's bushy brown hair. The flippant kid was telling the most obscene joke that he'd ever heard uttered, and even from here the braided kid could hear the snarls and slurs slapped together to make a ho joke. Dr. G heard everything.  
  
"Shithead," Maxy snorted. He turned back to his lunch and stirred it dispassionately. All the while, his acute hearing kept the conversation in his head.  
  
"Luigi… turn around!" Marcos, another slacker.  
  
"You'd best do what you friend says," Dr. G snapped with slow menace, giving a spine-shuddering tone. Maxy knew. He'd heard it before; it only meant suffering in the forecast.  
  
"Dr. G, I didn't know you were joining us for lunch. Hell, I didn't even hear—"  
  
A slap. Loud enough to silence everyone. Eyes turned, except Maxy's unique purple ones. He shook his head and stared at his Italian slop.  
  
"You didn't hear me? Test failed, Luigi."  
  
"Wha—" The next word was muddled by blood from his cut tongue, "— I didn't know about any test!"  
  
"You think it matters to me what you didn't know?"  
  
"No?"  
  
"Good." Slap. "Get up."  
  
"Jesus! Aw, fuc—"  
  
Slap. "I said get up!"  
  
"You keep hitting me! How the hell do you expect me to get up?!"  
  
Maxy shook his head. "Bad moooove," he muttered to himself.  
  
Silence. Blood-curdling silence.   
  
"Repeat that…please." The death-sentence in his voice was clear. His teeth grated over the word please.  
  
By now Luigi had realized his mistake. "Oh god, I'm sorry, Dr. G! I didn't mean that, I swear. You know, the milk's a little old and it just gets to my head… Delirium. I didn't mean that!"  
  
Maxy heard something rustle in the pocket of Dr. G's pocket. He titled his head ever so slightly.  
  
A knife was slapped into Luigi's wretched out hand, sharp side down so it bit and blood streamed like a red waterfall to collect in a sprawling pool on the floor. A scream escaped him but it was silenced by another snap. "That mouth will be the death of you boy," Dr. G snarled, with extra anger on the word boy. "Get rid of it now, before it causes the deaths of others."  
  
"Wha?" Luigi cradled his burning left cheek.  
  
"Your lips. Cut them off."  
  
Maxy's jaw wanted to drop, but his heart was just as panicky as Luigi's and paranoia settled over him. He was afraid any wrong move would anger Dr. G and send him after him too.  
  
Luigi started a shake of his head, but it was electrically canceled by fierce smack. A flinch echoed through the crowd and some shrunk over their plates.  
  
"…No…" Luigi muttered, in a sort of unbelieving drunken daze.  
  
"Okay. Don't."  
  
This time the sound of bones breaking greeted them. A few displaced, bloody teeth clattered to the ground, and the now frail-looking body of the Deuce boy was curled up in hysterical submission.  
  
Dr. G watched him whimper for a minute then simply waved his hand casually over his shoulder. Two older agents, their shirts busting with biceps and a cold attitude, came and collected the barely 70 pound boy gruffly. Maxy sat bolt upright, not only from curiosity but also from the ominous sensation that had made the hair on his neck stand on end. He watched as the body of Luigi was carried, Dr. G hobbling quickly behind, into a room on the far end of the cafeteria; a door nobody noticed.  
  
But Maxy knew it. He narrowed his violet eyes stoically, then silently hunched over his cold food. He numbly lifted his fork to his lips and then felt it. The vibration in the air that the masses in the cafe ignored.  
  
The door was soundproof. And bulletproof.   
  
Maxy looked at the Milkdud he had pinched in his fingers, then reflecting on the hardened face of his cruel Professor, ate it up in defiance.  
  
The clock in the old car, not even crystal or electric, ticked through the night without errors. It said it was time to go, that his victim would probably be waiting, if the bastard really had come. A smile wretched the sides of his face, and another lukewarm candy was mashed by his pearly teeth. The poor pathetic fellow actually had believed him. The Deuce, moving from his reclined position across the seats and against the driver side door, peaked again under the blue tarp in the backseat. That's were he would have put the guns and other things, but it was just some wrenches and metal poles. The guns themselves had gone into his private collection, shipped to a retreat on earth, or into the incinerator if they sucked.  
  
Better not tell that to the guy. He didn't need him any madder than he would be. Maxy just kept reminding himself of the look on Quatre's face… that's what he was doing this for… revenge.  
  
He needed motivation. He really didn't want to die tonight.  
  
It was a stale night, not a single wind to cool off the beads of sweat that the inside of the car had forced on him. The heat finally came to a peak where he couldn't stand it. His lungs sang of salvation, breathing in the cooler air as he rolled the window down. He hooked his elbow on the door and rhythmically tapped his fingers against the side. He ached for a radio, but knew it only picked up talk shows that bored the jelly from his brain. From where he'd skillfully positioned the car, the only hill outside the airport was highlighted against the orange-tinted lights of far off streets and the glow from the airport itself. Anyone passing that way would have passed through it and instantly caught his eye. He had virtually had never lost eye contact with the passage out to the rendezvous. It never struck him as odd that he had never spotted anyone block the light. But he never fretted over it.  
  
He, Maxy, a Deuce agent, had learned early on in training, in life, that anxiety burned your brain cells five times faster than nonchalance. Oh, they burned, they went away on their own, but there was no rush to it. Let life drain on its own. It'd be gone before you thought.  
  
Suddenly, it was quiet.  
  
It was never quiet at an airport. Departing roars cracked the black like a hidden animal screaming of the hunt as airplanes struggled to pull them from gravity's control. Those dulled and slowly ended. Canceled flights? The grunt of cars start and stopping along the lit lobby sputtered a few times and again, found their death in silence. The Deuce shuddered at the temporarily case of laryngitis that had rattled the throats of engines surrounding the airport. The thunderous beating of panic in his chest replaced it almost instantaneous and where casualness had relaxed him, his adrenaline made him paranoid.  
  
Why was it so damn quiet?!  
  
Violet eyes snapped side to side, inspecting the dirt road he'd parked on, leading out to a dead end in a field besides a fence and a few dotted street lights to light the inside of the airport property. Dying dandelions surrounded him, an occasional wind puffing the white seeds onto the air. He craned his head out the open window to look back at the gate he busted down and then hastily propped into place again. It hadn't been moved. Good, that calmed his paranoia a bit. It didn't put out the fire, though.  
  
Maxy reached down for another Milkdud. He blinked, at the odd sound he heard, then jerked back upright. A chiseled eyebrow went down. He acutely listened to the ticking of the clock from where he had been sitting. It sounded fine.  
  
Tick… tick… tick…  
  
He leaned in.  
  
TickTICK.. TickTICK.. TickTICK  
  
There obviously was something wrong with his clock. Or… or….  
  
There was something else there.  
  
"Holy SHYT!" Maxy lurched forward, his fingers clawing into any part of the consol that he could possibly tear out. The tuner on the broken radio flew into the seat and sparks riddled the air. He winced at the sensation of broken plastic razor sharp on his skin. He plunged his arm into the consol, pulling it out and punching a larger hole. Plastic snapped loudly, glass shattered and spilled down to his feet.   
  
The Deuce made panicked animal noises in the bottom of his throat from desperation. "Goddamnit!" he screamed, his skin still catching on the jagged edges, tearing, and preventing him from going deeper into the consol. He grunted, and passed his blood completely with his panicked eyes.  
  
TickTICK.. TickTICK.. TickTICK… Tick… Tick… TICK  
  
Maxy blinked and recoiled. "Too late…" His eyes narrowed. "The bastard did this…"   
  
Then it was red and black and fire raining down.  
  



	5. Come to Kill the Rooster

Part 5  
COME TO KILL THE ROOSTER  
  
  
  
  
Tijuana, Mexico.   
  
The ice machine started. Deep in the perfect silent existence of night, it buzzed into monotone life, rumbling as ice collected in the freezer. It woke the cat, purring deeply in a dream. Her orange-cream tail whipped around its body lazily, and then she rolled over to sleep on her back, oblivious to anything wrong in her world. Her bushed kittens curled into their fetal positions again, all clinging to their mother's lush fur. One sat at the window and slept in the moonlight. It twitched its bitten nose in discomfort and fell deep asleep. A spilled margarita had been its tipsy dinner and the glass, licked clean, lay beside it. The cherry was half chewed.  
  
The ancient dog rested his bones on the couch, lit partially by cheap store-bought fiesta lamps that were strung across the ceiling by his lonely master. The TV had been shut off long ago, the grill on the patio cooled off, the kitchen mess cleaned sloppily, and the still-wet dishes stashed away. All the usual mannerisms of a middle-aged slob down on his luck in the getaway place of Tijuana. No children's toys graced the floor, no misplaced wedding ring, nadda.  
  
Guy Chare was decorated in credit from years of loyal and inventive service to the L-2 syndicate and for his service; he'd been retired early. A genius and trained in the best collage in chemistry and law, he had been one of the first to join the struggling group. He'd carried through where others had hesitated and consequently been caught. Knew every face in the syndicate, rifled through new talent and picked the best orphans off the street. Even picked the top agents a few times. His gut instinct was in way his gun; he had the precision of a premonition and often could predict to the degree he needed no weapon. Paid off in the end with a fat check to tuck under his belt of accomplishments. Retiring had brought peace to him finally where there had been paranoia. A week after being officially retired at the age of 63 with no marriage or relationships, a quiet place on earth sheltered from the criminality of the colonies seemed like a good place to rest his bones. After meeting up with a few Mexican friends who were just as surprised see him, they set him up with the house of Mesquite Marco, who had been shot in a street fight only a day before. 'Just act drunk every once in a while,' they said, 'and the police and the neighbors won't even notice he's gone!'  
  
'Can do,' he remembered saying with a smile and a beer bottle to his lip.  
  
He lay in his bed, fighting the heat. A fan buzzed like a swarm of bugs in the balcony, almost futile in the overwhelming, swelling humidity of Tijuana that night. He drifted in an out of a troubled sleep, with his other hissy tomcat sulking sourly at the foot of the bed. Suddenly, he flicked his ears and sat staring with deep emotionless green eyes at the dark hall that led to the stairs down to the first level. His sinuous body slipped off the bed easily and silently, trotting down the hallway.  
  
The cat sat at the top of the stairs and meowed. He cocked his head and flicked his whiskers in curiosity.  
  
And meowed again.  
  
"Good kitty…" a man said breathily, raising his gloved hand to soothe its meowing with a scratch behind the ears. "Shhh."  
  
The tomcat meowed again and trotted away, to hide under the couch. The man smiled with an evil hint and lowered his tinted goggles to shield his eyes and also hide them. The last thing he needed was to be recognized, shouted at, and alerted of his presence to the drunken Mexicans who hung like buzzards around all the houses. No doubt they would run to their police or jump in to rescue their friend with broken beer bottles in hand.   
  
He moved up the stairs silently, his footsteps muted by the brown shag carpeting. Mud collected on his boots left an obvious trail of slop leading to open bedroom door. The man paused fearlessly by the creaking wood frame, in full view of his target if he happened to wake up. It didn't matter. Licking his dry lips once, he pulled his gun from his pocket, held the butt and barrel in the cloth of his shirt to silence releasing the safety. He leveled it and was careful to avoid the cat.  
  
Two seconds later Guy Chare stopped moving. His cats screamed a high-pitch shriek and scattered to hiding places on both levels, the kitten by the window scratching at the door to get out. The man hid his gun again and calmly walked back down the stairs. He exhaled a reassured breath and removed his goggles, letting them hang at the back of his neck. He slid the dining room glass door open and let the honey-colored cat dash into the stale night, disappearing behind a trash can. Leaning out, he tested the air. It was thick and sultry, still quiet and undisturbed. He took a few steps out into the dirt until the earth was solid and left no trace of his footprints. Out fifteen yards, he slipped off his muddy boots and exchanged them for fresh ones in his pack. Stashing the old, he circled around the house, opposite of his tracks, and made his getaway down the empty street. The man tucked his goggles under his collar and snatched a half-finished tequila bottle from the ditch and feigned his way out of Tijuana as a drunk.  
  
  
  
  
"Lou... I'm scared. I'm scared shitless. We ain't never been one of those professional kinda people! We're gonna screw it up for Maxy, we's gonna screw it all up for us too!" The Italian rung his hands secretly over his knees, kneading them like bread dough. "He's gonna come back and kick our ass, I know it."  
  
"Since when did you start having this phobia of a fifteen year old, Jeremy?"  
  
"Lou! Who doesn't! He gets sent on all these Tom Cruise secret missions and comes back all bloody, with a look in his eye like he's fucking Hannibal!" Ivy green-brown eyes flashed panic back and forth as the Deuce sunk back in his seat.  
  
"First of all you jack-off," Lou snapped, turning on Washington in blazing neon lights, "life isn't some horror movie, so stop making those stupid references!"  
  
"I was just saying—"  
  
"Fuck off, Jer, I'm talking!" He snapped, turning his head from the road and glaring across the car.   
  
Jer sunk deep into his seat, until the dashboard hid him from the rest of the world and his phobia shined in his eyes as he rung his hands still. He submissively nodded his head, not daring to make eye contact.   
  
"Second of all, how do you know that his missions are so fucking bad, huh?"  
  
"I just assume that…"  
  
"That's right," he snapped, "You assume. It makes an ass out of u and me. Ever heard that piece of crap, huh, Jer? Huh?"  
  
Jeremy shook his head, strangely silent.  
  
"That's right, bitch! You're too stupid, that's why."  
  
"Come on, you're not acting like your usual asshole way. You're acting like a… real asshole."  
  
"Jesus, you're acting like a pussy," Lou stated flatly. "Figlio di puttana."  
  
Jer flashed his greenish-brown eyes over for a second, subdued by his fear so much his lips pursed and he had nothing to react with.   
  
"Did you bring the note?"   
  
The submissive Deuce pulled a crinkled piece of notebook paper graced by their friends jagged and rebellious handwriting. He held it out for his partner to see. Lou flashed his eyes down the paper, reviewing the note again professionally.  
  
"Good," Lou said critically, his eyes shifting to scrutinize the city lights on the horizon. "Gimme. You'll screw up."  
  
As the newly hardened Louis Santarini snatched it out of his partner's hand, he growled and saw the flinching fear in Jer's eyes. Like he'd been locked in the car with a psycho and just spotted the knife in his coat pocket. He intensified it by glaring at his friend like a pile of shit on his seat. He was cranky, that was a given. Pressure resulted in bitchiness for him and the pressure was on like a teakettle on a heated stove. His cork was gonna pop, he was gonna go mad. Maxy had left a single, speedily written note explaining in one note that would require a half-hour report if the leaders found out. An hour if it was Dr. G.  
  
'Lou, Jer. I really need your help on this one, 'kay? I've kinda dug my self into some shit and I need you guys to cover up for me until I get back. Serious shit. I didn't even realize how much until it was already… shitted. Heh, that sounded bad. Anyway, I don't think you need to know the details, it would only hurt you. This one could get ugly, and it'll be even uglier if one of my superiors finds out. Go to my apartment, find Treize. If anything goes wrong, send him to the L-1 airport to do a cover-up. I might be dead by then, but I could be dead any second, you know. Don't get sad over me. I'll probably get my assed kicked anyway, so wish me luck. I stole some guns so if it turns into something hostage, you can use them. Under my bed, in the secret compartment of my suitcase. The big one.  
Sorry.  
Maxy'  
  
He handed it back to his comrade. Lou turned the black Renault down another road, taking his path in a combination of a written out mental map and tactics to lose anyone who may have followed. The skies slowly darkened until even the clouds were hard to see in the blackness, and the streets were filled more and more with shady characters. Just Maxy's kind of street.   
  
"He'll let us in, right?" Jer asked timidly.  
  
"What?" Lou said angrily and dispassionately simultaneously, eyes not leaving the road. "Who?!"  
  
"Treize, I mean." Jer rang his hands with less fervor.  
  
"Why do you worry so fucking much? Huh?" He glared at his friend. "Why are you so damn TENSE!? HUH?" He was screaming now and catching the attention of a few as his foot subconsciously eased off the gas and slowed it to twenty mph.  
  
"Lou…"  
  
"SHUT UP." Lou gritted loudly through his teeth.   
  
"Sorry." The once-raucous Italian sunk deeply into his seat. Shame flashed his eyes out the window, watching the passing people while his brain kept at what could be so pressuring that would make his laid-back friend so cross. He didn't need to worry for long; five minutes later the black car paused outside the apartment, eyes inside scoping out how many lights were on.   
  
"Jer."  
  
"What?" he asked timidly, folding his arms tight around him.   
  
"You do know which apartment it is, don't you?" Lou asked, craning his head to see back and forth. "I mean, it's in the note, aint it?"  
  
Bitterness forgotten, Jer pulled the note back out, uncrinkling it. Lou nervously put the car in park and flashed looks back and forth from the note to the unreadable face of his partner and to the sidewalk. It was a tense moment as he watched Lou's eyes scan left to right, then dart fiercely back to the left like a frenzied typewriter. He pulled the keys from the ignition and stuffed them in his pocket. Jer turned to him, running his hair through his disheveled hair in apprehensive habit. "So," Lou asked. "Is it there?"  
  
"Uh…" He shook his head. "Nah."  
  
"Damn." Lou slammed his fist against the steering wheel. "I didn't come to do a search. I especially don't wanna deal with some smart-assed manager. Check the back, is it there?"  
  
"No," he confirmed. He flipped it back and forth. "Nothing, nadda, shit."  
  
"Shit is right," he muttered sourly. "Well, maybe we can just check the books or something. What's his last name? You gotta know his last name."  
  
"Like hell I know," Jer snapped incredulously. "I've never even met this asshole."   
  
"Just great." Lou drummed his fingers along the leather of the steering wheel. He looked over to his friend. "Just get out of the car. We'll find him. Grab the gun."  
  
The trash-mouthed Italian nodded and reached into the backseat and, flipping back the blanket stuffed in the legroom of the backseat and rustling through metal parts loudly, pulled a desired weapon from the pile. Lou watched him with critical eyes then moved the rearview mirror once. He glanced at it, squinted, and then turned his head to stare through the dirty backwindow. Jer went on obliviously, routinely loading the gun and examining it carefully, humming an old tune. His eyes went wide, then instantly narrowed with suspicion and his hand slapped down on his comrade's arm.   
  
"Lou?—"  
  
"Shhh!" he hissed loudly, pushing Jer violently down in the seat. "Don't move you son of a bitch else I'll shoot you myself!"  
  
"What the hell are you doin—"   
  
"I said quiet!" Lou snapped. He clamped a silencing hand over his friend's overactive mouth forcefully, taking on a glowering look as his eyes darted to the figure of a car slowly passing by. Jer watched in confusion. A small, ordinary looking green car buzzed mildly by; the tinted windows rolled up to keep out the L-2 cold. It paused at the end of the street, patiently waiting for a red light to switch to green on an empty intersection, then turned and disappeared to the right. Lou frowned and watched the empty street a few seconds after it had left. His friend Jer just cocked one eyebrow and turned.  
  
"What's wrong with you, you paranoid mother—"  
  
"What kind of car does Dr. G drive?" Lou's eyes didn't leave the street.  
  
Jer looked at him curiously at first, then it shifted to disbelief. "I don't' know," he said. "But you don't think he'd follow us, ya think? We're his own fucking students! Doesn't he trust us worth shit? Even if he didn't, he'd know Treize's apartment, wouldn't he? He wouldn't think we were sleeping with the enemy or something, would he? After all I though he was the one who organized all the surveillance crap in there." The Italian placed the gun in his lap and stared at his partner.  
  
After a few seconds, Lou looked over to him. "You know what, you scare me when you talk like you have some fucking brains. Swear more. Never really say anything again, okay? It scares me bad."  
  
Jer puckered his bottom lip angrily. "Aw, shit. You know I'm right, don't' you?"  
  
Lou shook his head. "Dr. G doesn't even know about that."  
  
"Why not."  
  
"Maxy did it. You know him. He doesn't like to do things under consent. He always said if something went wrong they killed people that did the wrong thing for them, so if he did it himself, no innocent people would be killed. A depressing hero, ain't he?" Lou put his elbow on the steering wheel. "Maxy found Treize digging into information on our syndicate and tried to kill him. Then he turned him over to our side, kind of secretly. He says he's just there for protection and tells him very little, you know, Mad Maxy's own little thirty-year-old lackey, but—" Lou put his fingers up to his lips causally, stroking the stubble around his mouth. "— I don't believe him."  
  
"Maxy organized all the surveillance stuff?" Jer blinked.   
  
"That's what he says; nobody's ever seen it. For all we know it could be just a TV with four porno channels."  
  
"I's don't think Maxy's smart enough to set all the technical stuff. Placing cameras, hell ya, that's the fun shit, but before he couldn't even set his watch right." The Italian laughed raspily. "Besides, why the hell would he want to? It's not like Maxy to do homework."  
  
"Who knows. It's not like you to think, either, dipshit." He looked over his shoulder again, scanning for more suspicious cars. He turned to his comrade, flashing his eyes in the discreet signal to move in. "Leave the gun. If that's who I think it is, it'll only confirm to him that something backstabbing is going on and it'll lead him to us."  
  
"Eh, Lou, what the hell we gonna do if that guy in the car comes after us, huh? Then we'll be fucking screwed!" He watched the driver get out confidently and slam the door.  
  
"Shut up and come on, Pussy."  
  
Jer's face screwed up with acidity, but no anger at his brother could make him not follow the orders he gave. Despite his excessive swearing, the grimy-faced Italian followed orders to the letter for fear of failure, expulsion, or death. He stuffed the gun back under the blanket, patted it down, and followed Lou onto the sidewalk. He walked in by his brother's side as he leaned in slightly and asked.  
  
"Car locked?"  
  
"'Course, ass! I'm not that fu—" A punishing jab via Lou's elbow cut off his cursing as a man appeared behind the desk. Lou walked up and put on a swagger, putting both elbows down on the counter and staring the beer-gutted, curly mop-topped man in the squinting eyes. The entire area reeked of bad quality beer. His mouth rotated like a goat's, busy with a piece of over-chewed gum. It clearly had no flavor left because the man's breath was just as bad as ever.  
  
"Can I help ya fellers?" he slurred, tossing a generic beer can in to his backroom, while the muted sounds of I Love Lucy continued. "Wanna room? Cheap as hell and qua-lit-y cable TV! Showtime and HBO!"  
  
"No sir—" Lou tried to be polite, but his patient had been spent from the car ride. It showed in his   
  
"If it's because that twerp told you rumors about the cockroaches speaking Chinese and taking bathes in the sink, I can assure you gentlemen they are not true. Why, when that kid gets back I'm gonna duct tape his cake hole shut. He won't bother you two. Promise," the man said with ruddy-cheeked fervor.   
  
"No, no, you misunderstand us," Lou said, taking on uncharacteristically courteous qualities. "We've come to do business with one of your customers. Urgent business I'm afraid."  
  
"Well," the man said, laughingly with a jiggling beer-gut, "that is different, isn't it? You guys work for one of those big corp-o-rations? Wall Street, stock exchange, maybe? You think you could hook me up with a good broker? I've been thinking bout getting my own prop-er-ty!"  
  
"That's wonderful, sir, but no sir."  
  
The man reached up and slapped Lou's shoulder. "There's no need to be so damn stiff with me, mister! Call me Zeb, like it says on that n-ice name plate there." He laughed heartily, with a hint of a wheezing problem that would hit him in a few years.  
  
"Okay, Zeb—"  
  
"Say, I never got you name," he said while playfully pointing a finger. "Mind enlightening me, y'all?"  
  
Lou frowned a tad but didn't let it overcome his emotions. He cleared his throat and replied. "My name is Zachary Atkins and this is my business associate Francis Forsyght. We've come looking for a man named Treize who's been here probably a few weeks now. As I said, it's actually very urgent business and very important business. Life or death, if you will. Corporate ruin or success, in other words. We'd really like to speak with this man, soon."  
  
The man rubbed his grubby chin. "Eh…. Eh… er, um," he mumbled incoherently, looking 'Mr. Atkins' and 'Mr. Forsyght' in the eyes. "Tray, you say?"  
  
"No," Lou said huffily, his patience wearing boldly through his professional, clean-mouthed façade. "Treize. T-r-e-I-z-e! Tall, brunette British man!"  
  
The manager was dumbfounded. He sat and stared like a deer in the headlights. Lou's face wrinkled with fury and he slammed his fist. "You don't understand; a friend of ours will die sooner or later if we don't see him. Immediately."  
  
"Er…"  
  
"Smokes a lot, drinks a lot of tea, hangs out in his room a lot, shady, cynical, tot-al ass-hole! Any of this ringing a bell?"  
  
"No," the man said honestly, tolerant of Lou's brashness. "I'll check the book though. A last name, please?"  
  
Lou flattened his palms and fisted them back and forth on the counter. He breathed out a heavy sigh then finally controlled himself. "I don't know."  
  
"Well, mista, that's notta lotta help here." The book he'd taken out clumsily from under the counter lay unused before the two 'businessmen.'  
  
"I know that."  
  
"Is he here with anyone else?"  
  
A slight look of relieve came over his facial features. "Of course." Lou slapped his forehead. "He's here with a young man, about fourteen, slim build, long hair, very long hair—"  
  
"Oh!" the ruddy-faced man laughed and slapped the counter, shutting the book confidently. "You mean the twerp! Hippie-on-the-Third-Floor, the obnoxious little kid! Why didn't' you mention him before? I'd know that he-devil anywhere! Or she… people are pretty confused when they see that hair! I'll tell ya, he's stolen every single bottle of hair stuff in this freak-en building! Shampoo-trick-or-treating! Maxine or something like that…"  
  
"Yes, yes. He's in the same room as Treize, right?"  
  
"I suppose. I've never heard his name before." The man leaned in, flashing eyes back and forth secretly, like he held some very important information in his head. "Everybody around here calls him the twerp's lover! I doubt after the rumors they're spreading that I'll ever be able to rent that room again!"  
  
Jer's eyes flared wide open, suddenly in tune to every word of the conversation, his jaw about ready to drop open. Lou's reaction didn't stray far from that, but his controlled it and slammed a discreet elbow back into his partner, silencing the gasp. "Uh… thank you, but we'd just like the room number, if you please," he asked politely, as red as hell.  
  
  
* * * * *  
  
  
"Holy fuck, you heard that!" Jer yelped in a hushed voice, his eyes wide and focused on the stony but obviously red face of his comrade. His hand yanked on Lou's jacket, demanding attention.   
  
"Maxy, that Treize guy… Oh good God," he moaned, face taking unnatural tint as if he was hunched over the rail of a ship, declaring his seasickness with his face. "The hair… I should have known! And he shook my hand, Jesus!"  
  
Lou glared over at him. "Shut up, Jer. I'll smack that overactive anus-face of yours."  
  
They clamored up the stairs to the third floor, sacredly alone in the whitewashed cement halls sprayed with graffiti. Hands stuffed collectively in pockets, they trudged faithfully up each twist and flight of stairs. Lou glanced over to his fidgeting comrade, his hair mussed up by nervous fingers. His blue eyes cast down to the dirty floor, lip bit in bold phobia. Jer twitched and jerked like he'd drank fifty thousand cups of coffee. The panicky animal caught his look.  
  
"Jesus Christ!" he shrieked like Tweek and shrunk away. "Don't look at me like that! Sick bastard!"  
  
Lou rolled his eyes. "Come on, you homophobe, don't tell me you believed that pile of shit."  
  
"What?" Jer stopped in his tracks, giving a confused five-year-old look that'd just been given the straightforward answer for 'Where do babies come from?'  
  
The Italian paused as well, nonchalantly, almost casually turning and shrugging. "Typical Maxy technique. He's always trying to get a rise out of someone."  
  
Jer's eyes widened, attaching Lou's words to a sick innuendo in his own head.   
  
"You have a sick mind, you know that dipshit?" He heaved an angry sigh, leaning against the rail. "And if you're worried about our friend being gay, don't worry." The Italian couldn't suppress his urge any more and flipped out a cigarette for a brief smoke.  
  
"… Wha… I'm confused, Jer. You're fucking my head up, you know that?"  
  
"Because you're stupid; that's the only reason why." Lou snuffed at him, flipping back the metal lid on his generic lighter. He lit it and cupped his hand in a rehearsed habit, shaking out the fire and slipping the lighter back in his pocket. A defiant cloud of smoke floated toward Jer and the twitching man shook it jumpily away.   
  
"I happen to know that Maxy's been with this blonde chick for two years. He asks me to cover every once and a while. You know, while's out with her. He's more loyal to that broad than any kid in any high school; says he just wants to be a good boyfriend. " He looked disdainfully over his cig and the smoke it bred. "He's not gay. But I wouldn't blame him… he's got the worse luck. Attracted this chick with eyebrows from hell. Personally, I think he's starting to hate the shit out of her. I would too.  
  
"As for the whole 'lovers' thing, it's just a scheme. They're rooming together; they've got a surveillance system that's in all the important places. Banks, mansions, warehouses. They've no doubt got all Maxy's guns out so he can admire him like the vain bastard he is. Who would bother them, considering the rumors about them? No one would ever come to visit. Thus defecting chances of getting caught."  
  
"Holy shit, you do not know whadda relief that is…"   
  
"Yes, I do and this is enough Rikki Lake, okay?" He dropped his still glowing cigarette with no fear of it burning the concrete floor. "Let's get going. Like I said, little time, motherfucker."  
  
Third floor. Jer glanced nervously around taller, hovering skittishly besides his darker comrade while he was occupied with getting Treize up at this ungodly hour. The darkened hallway lit occasionally down its shag-carpeted length by orange light that flowed through the open doors of unoccupied rooms. Lou's face hardened with patience and anger, and his mind seemed to slip as he knocked again and again. He paused and waited for someone to come walking, answer, anything. They both stood in silence, not bothered by any of the other renters. Jer looked at his brother, then to the door.   
  
"Treize?" Lou asked darkly.  
  
"Hey, it's okay! We's are wit you, you don't have to worry. Mad Max left us a note. He needs you pretty soon pal!" Jer said causally, with a jest to his voice. His hands rested in the bulk of his coat pocket and he shrugged with a tilted smirk. "Come on, wake up."  
  
"Jer…" the taller Italian stated it in sort of a realizing daze. Jer cast his eyes over in a bit of confusion, as his brother unsheathed his short knife and drove it into the spyglass in the door like a spear into the eye of an enemy. He pulled it forcefully out, deposited the glass lens in his palm, and tucked away his knife.   
  
"Now why'd you do that for? Fuck, we're going to have to pay for that!" Jer snapped, rolling his eyes angrily.  
  
"Shut up, would you?" Lou said, turning back toward his younger brother. "Something's wrong and your swearing just distracts you from seeing it. Come on."  
  
The older, grimy faced Italian Deuce lifted his knee in a fluid motion and brought it down with a hellish force, bringing the bulk of the brown door with it. Dust greeted them in a furious swirl, almost enraged that its silence had been disturbed. Lou lifted his hand to keep it from biting in his eye, as the door clattered mutely to the carpet, hinges ripped clean off and rolling around on the floor like beheaded insects from their momentum. Jer recoiled, a bit paranoid, behind his brother's body and peaked out. A sticky, clinging metallic smell clawed at his senses, almost dizzying him. Lou's lips sucked back into his face.  
  
He knew that smell like the back of his hand. Blood. "Stay, you sorry S.O.B.," he said acidly. His muted brother nodded.  
  
Stepping not-so-lightly on the door, Lou trotted in, urging on his gun secretly in his inside coat pocket. The closet pressed the small hallway in the opening of the apartment, and front of the living room obstructed by the old bulky TV, oblivious and blank on its mahogany stand. Lou pressed his back against the dark-colored wall, sniffing deeply. The smell was overwhelming now. He screwed up his face, senses overloaded with the saturation of death. Eyes cast down, and then blinked. A steady stream of blood hooked around the corner, inching steadily toward the door. Lou breathed a sigh of relief and walked around the corner, fearing nothing.   
  
"…Open up, it's me Max—Open up, it's me Max—Open up, it's me Max…"  
  
A second-rate, cruddy-quality tape recorder lay abandoned in the blood at his feet as he stood there, jerking back in cutting repetition from the kick someone had given it in the keys. Out came Maxy's voice, dulled by the monotone repeating. Lou frowned at it and kicked it over and silenced it. The Italian glanced up and his stomach wanted to wrench. He kept his face stony as he rolled over the body of what seemed to be left of Treize. A pale face and the showers of blood surrounding him, pouring out of him, and hardening on him suggested death by bleeding, and sure enough, when he kneeled down and moved his wrist, they were both slit. His attentive blue eyes were glazed and white, rolled half way back. His blue shirt was pocked with multiple shots, the dead flesh underneath it already rotting with infection. The smell was just plain gut busting. Squirming, Lou stood back up and said causally over his shoulder, "Come in, you chicken. He's dead."  
  
Hurried footsteps. Jer came running in, swearing furiously and throwing his arms in the air after seeing the corpse of their elusive Treize. He slammed his fist into the wall and grumbled, exploring the rest of the apartment, screaming for Maxy. Lou left the dead body and went to the window. Just like he'd expected, it was there.   
  
A small dark car pulling around the corner, past their car and swimming out into city lights to be lost. Lou blinked and looked back to Jer. He nodded. "Come on."  
  
  
  
  
He hated white. White meant revival, survival, a redemption of body and soul for those allowed it. And with a grudge, he accepted that he wasn't meant for such things; they were trivial to the normal person, a rare gift from God to him. And he scorned God, so was he ever going to have it? Hell no. Mafia men always said that physical scars may heal but no sweet lord's nurse would ever be able fix the scars on the inside. A good woman could hide them; give them love to make it stop hurting, but where there wasn't that woman on their mind, the scars were. White disgusted him even more nowadays, when he'd read that it symbolized grieving in other societies in some book. It was bad enough before, now it meant pity? He had no use for that.  
  
That's why he hated hospitals. Partially because they smelled like soap, but mostly because they were holistic pity breeding grounds. That's why he was watching the nurse, focusing on her black hair, pale peach skin, and ruby colored lips: to distract him. Asian. L-1 nurse, considering where he was. Oblivious to her conscious patient, she busied around the small hospital monitors. Her naturally slight-set frame was hiding behind her nurse's suit not because of her need for covering her body, but to cover her trained shyness. Maxy never understood why people needed to hide from one another because of insecurities. It was horrible that the confident, holier-than-thou people could let it happen. It took five seconds to sit down and say hello, to show that everybody's imperfect, everybody's human. Maybe he was just trying to make up for his destroyed pure mentality vicariously through others, but damn it, it didn't feel good to be treated like dirt.  
  
The nurse paused over a strange-looking machine dotted with glowing green digits, humming to herself some fluctuating Japanese tune while she held a clipboard. Her long black hair in a ponytail bobbed and glided back and forth across her back, then whipped around her shoulder as she moved over to another, then another, scribbling at each one separately. She folded her arms and tapped a pen to her puckered lips as she read the heart monitor, only a few feet away from him but still unaware. Maxy smiled and didn't move, watching her face squirm as she tried to interpret the heart-readings. The American decided to play.  
  
He watched her big brown eyes from the side dart as he voluntarily sped up his heartbeat then let himself relax, then did it again. Unable to stop smiling, he snorted to suppress his laugher.  
  
She turned and her eyes locked on him. They widened, a congenial shade of dark amber, and then closed as she broadly smiled. "Hi!" she piped. Her voice was laden with an accent, but sort of a cute, innocent accent that rolled off her tongue. "So… you're awake finally."  
  
Maxy laughed and put his hand to his hair, which had been unbraided and caped down the pillows. "Yeah, I am. I wouldn't be talking now, I guess, would I?"  
  
The nurse smiled. "Guess not."  
  
He looked around at the bleak whiteness of the whole room. He looked up again. "How long have I been asleep?"  
  
"Not long. It's 9:25," she said, pulling his watch out of the drawer near his hospital bed. "You're… very fortunate to be living."  
  
Maxy wedged himself up with his arms. He squinted for a window and ignored her last comment. "A.M.?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Are you serious?" Maxy brushed it off. "Nevermind. There's no reason for you to trick me, right? I must be getting paranoid or something," he said, rubbing his knotty hair.   
  
"Paranoid or not, you're very lucky," she commented.  
  
"Oh yeah?" He smiled and tilted his head on the pillow. "How so?"  
  
She pulled up a chair, finished with writing and putting the clipboard down. "Don't you remember what happened? I would remember being in an explosion, wouldn't you?"  
  
"Actually, I've been in more explosions than I can count. Not a big deal for me. What, did I blow out the windshield? I'm not cut or anything, am I?" He laughed nervously.   
  
"You were thrown out the window and strained your ankle. Second degree burns on your thighs and torso, third degree on your lower right arm and hand. Some internal bleeding and a few scratches."   
  
"Oh… is that all?" he said offhandedly.  
  
Her lips made an odd movement as she stared at him, summing up him as some maniac probably, shrugging off the fact he'd just been in a car explosion like it was tripping on the street curb. Maxy assumed this, but didn't ask her. He met her big brown eyes, big doe eyes, and offered a half-faked smile to hide his nervousness at her stare but only ended up emphasizing it in his hesitant grin.  
  
"Uh Miss, could you get me some water please?" Maxy felt better now changing the subject and her judging look turned to a courteous smile.   
  
"Sure," she said, stepping out of the room on the flight of clicking heels. "Be right back. Don't move too much, you'll tire yourself out."  
  
"Thank you!" he yelled after her. Once the sound of her shoes left his range, the young Deuce settled back into the feathery depths of his pillow. He tried to find sleep somewhere in there, but only got as far as closed eyes. His insomniac mind was up and running and leaving him behind with bold bags that he knew were there. He flipped a few strands out behind him on the pillow and tried stubbornly to sleep. He was so tired… but his body just wanted to be a bitch to him. Making a few not-so-subtle position changes in the rustling sheets, he finally just lay back and huffed defeat. Closing his eyes, he thought he'd just relax… not get worked up, not yet.  
  
Struggling against the unseen demons of insomnia, he didn't notice the new person standing in the doorway; her shady ways clear in her mannerisms. Her almost soulless blue eyes watched the boy snort into his pillow, smack it once or twice, then try again to sleep. At the back of her neck her stunningly long blonde hair was pulled into a tight, jagged bun. Her seventeen year old body was feminine and smoothed out, unlike her boyfriend's gaunt and contradictorily muscular one. Maybe that was why she kept up this half-feigned sexual infatuation with him… opposites attract, they always say. Her hand was around the glass of water she'd intercepted from the nurse, pressing it to her collarbone and letting it cool her off.   
  
Watching him, oblivious to her, made her smile. It gave her a sort of demonic, teasing control over him. She could stand here for hours and judge him; he'd never complain. She could watch his attractive body turn in the sheets; he'd never shoot her a screwed-up face and demand eye contact. Now he was a child, like he should be. Right now he wouldn't order her to stop with her sexual deviance, or depress her with his occasional, out-of-character rants about uselessness in the world and just how he was supposed to deal with it. Right now, he was perfectly innocent… and pissed off.  
  
The blonde girl pursed her lips in a shallow, faked smile and walked up to the boy, silently watching him. It was funny catching herself calling him 'the boy'. It made it sound like he meant nothing to her: a tree in the woods, a fart while skydiving, or a holey umbrella on a blue-bowl day. Perhaps it was that way. Maybe he was just… unimportant to her. Without him, her life lived on like birds fly after a storm. With him, the skies she flew darkened with oppressing thunder and beautiful lightning. He may have the greatest body, the greatest smile, and the best damn sex she'd ever been graced with, but he was a walking, talking, and happy bomb. She barely could stand his almost schizophrenic outbursts of anger and depression. He used to be happy. Maybe that's why she had fallen for him in the first place. When he had stopped feigning happiness, she could barely stand him. And he could barely stand her. She'd stay in it for the sex as long as she could. If he wanted love, he should find his own miserable lover…  
  
And with that, she poured the water onto his lap.  
  
"EEEEEeeeeeee!" The boy bolted up in bed.  
  
"You're up, honey," she said nastily. "Breakfast is waiting, sleepy head."  
  
Maxy, now freezing, steadied himself and glared at the face that hovered over his bed.   
  
"Dorothy, what the hell are you doing here? Can't you leave me for one second?" he asked angrily, folding his arms to stop shivering. "I'm gonna be outta here in an hour so just keep your legs closed, 'kay?"  
  
"Oh, so now it's 'what the hell are you doing here?' A few days ago you were the one making booty calls, desperate for attention. You turn around really fast. Bad day at work? PMS, maybe Maxy?" Cocking one forked eyebrow up, she smiled and shook her head gently. "You hurt me… you know, you really do," she cooed.   
  
"Don't bullshit me."  
  
"Don't swear at your girl," she said, her finger waving.  
  
"You're not my girl. You're more a demon than a girl."  
  
Dorothy closed her eyes and did a catty sigh. "I suppose your right… then what would you be, to me? An asshole? Or a schizophrenic bastard who needs a bj to relax?"   
  
His expression soured. "Listen, I'm honestly not ready to fight with you, okay? Like the nurse said, I've just been blown out my car and I'm dead tired. When I get out of bed, I'm going to get you a restraining order for glasses of any cold liquid, and then I've got to go have my ass kicked by Dr. G. If you don't want to take my place, don't fight with me now. Not yet. Are you okay with that?" he asked. He sat Indian style as his girl didn't break eye contact.  
  
"So… you don't love me?" she said innocently, with the sarcasm clear in her voice. "Not even a little, Duo Maxwell? Not even enough for a flower?"  
  
"Hey, watch the name!"  
  
"Duo. That name?"  
  
He rolled his violet eyes. "Yes, that one!"  
  
The blonde sat down on the counter besides the hospital equipment, folding her legs delicately and brushing out her orange dress. "Does it insult you, Duo Maxwell? I know you gave yourself that name, so why would it insult you? Are you psychotic?" she said innocently. "No? You could have fooled me, Duo."  
  
The boy shot her daggers in his look, losing all his charisma in another ball of rage she always seemed to provoke in him, along with the stresses of his life. He gritted his teeth once. "I knew it. I should have never told you that name… I knew from square one you wouldn't respect it and you didn't deserve to, either. I should have kept it a secret, like it was meant to be. Jesus, why was I so stupid…"  
  
"Because of this." Dorothy tugged the dress back on her right thigh.   
  
"Slut." He said finally, after a moment of consideration.  
  
"You're the one who's not above needing the slut," she said dispassionately, almost causally, while she rolled down her dress again.  
  
"I'm trying… I will." He said it softly to himself, almost confirming its truth. He smiled oddly, almost manically. It didn't disturb the blonde girl sitting on the counter; she'd seen it before. When he was killing sometimes… and she was sure that it was her face he plastered on the one of his victims, imagining her scream when they died. Maybe he had had a fling for her, but their conflicting personalities quickly sent it to hell on a bullet train. She stoned her face up and her annoyance with him was easy to remember and keep it that way. If she weren't careful, he'd go and catch her eye for one second and be so vulnerable looking… Well, she didn't know if she could control herself if he did. The thought of domination was exciting to her.   
  
'Maybe I should have been in politics,' she thought to herself. 'Or adult entertainment.'  
  
"Why did you come here?" he asked, his voice neutral. It snapped her out of her reverie like the glass of water had woken him up. "I know you Dorothy. You may bullshit me, but you don't take bullshit from anyone. Who sent you and what for? A gang? Some psycho stalker? Another hit and run? Assassination? I don't do those anymore." When she paused for an answer, he blinked. "Don't tell me you came here just for me. That would mean you care. And I'm pretty damn sure cold water in the crotch isn't the most romantic thing."  
  
"Why do you bastardize me so, Duo Maxwell?"  
  
"I don't. You take care of most of that yourself."  
  
She shook her head flirtatiously with a catty smile. "You sound like you lost your faith. Is that why you have such resentment at the world? No, you sound like God shoved a metal pole up your ass."  
  
"'Don't swear at your man,'" he taunted.   
  
"You're not my man. You're more a demon than a man. More a demon than a boy, even."  
  
Duo's violet eyes narrowed at her, accenting his incredibly sour expression. "Listen, I'd love to just gut our relationship now and leave it to just puss in the sun, but I don't wanna make a scene." He rubbed his temples. "What did you come for?"   
  
Her soulless blue eyes searched his, almost searching for his as well. It wasn't there.  
  
"Come on Duo." She slipped off the counter, dispassion in her voice. "When the nurse comes back, get your clothes and leave. The engine will be running."  
  
Watching her leave, disappearing down the sterile white halls, he shouted. "You still haven't told me what for!"  
  



	6. Losing My Religion

Part 6  
LOSING MY RELIGION  
  
  
  
Dorothy was boldly parked in the ambulance unloading area, arm slung out the window of her car. So far no one had noticed, all too busy with the morning feeding and cleaning of the patients and their rooms. The morning air was clean and surprisingly clean for the particular colony. Walking out while still fitting on his jacket, the smell of pine invaded him and a green wave of trees was out front of the hospital. Duo walked up and opened the door.   
  
"Where are we going?"  
  
"Get in Duo. I've got orders from Dr. G to get you home. He said, and I quote, "There's too many Jit's brown-nosing around." The drama had drained from her expressions, partly because she had sunglasses on.   
  
As he sat down and slammed the door, he asked, "How'd he find you?"  
  
"You know that bastard better than I do, take a guess. He just showed up," she said icily.   
  
As the purring engine revved and pulled them out of the unloading area and up the hill to the highway, a smile worked its way through Duo's bitter expression from the argument. He knew she'd been hiding something. Folding his arms, he didn't quit staring at her until she caught on and stared back.  
  
"What?"  
  
"He caught working, didn't he?" His smile was ready to pop his eyeballs. "Damn… poor you. Lemme guess… no tip?"  
  
"Shut up."   
  
"Not a good show?"  
  
"Do the words 'mutilation by lover' scare you?" she snapped, jarring her foot down on the pedal. "No? Well, I'll make you scared of it, you son of a bitch, you."  
  
"Ha. Incorrect. I don't have a mom," he said, kicking back and putting his hands behind his head. "Orphaned, remember?"  
  
Dorothy chewed her gum and didn't answer. Her long, painted-black fingernails drummed on the steering wheel, then turned it as she diverged from the steadily thickening Japanese morning commute. Her lips puckered in the side view mirror briefly as she pulled out a violet shade of lipstick and routinely applied it. She pulled herself back into the car, Duo watching her silently and with the disinterest of the usual teenager on a road trip, and looked over at him. It was a warning to keep shutted up. And he was happy to oblige. "It's part of the deal," she said to explain the lipstick. Duo couldn't help but smile his impish smile.  
  
A few meters down the road they were slowed by the presence of not-so-confident L-1 drivers and Dorothy's face soured. Leaning out the window, she gunned the engine threateningly, loud enough for it to be heard by the man driving the first slow car. He turned, visibly, and looked at Dorothy with critical, beady brown eyes. Smiling dangerously in reply, she fearlessly sped the car out onto shallow shoulder. Gravel spun out from the wheels with the speed of explosion shrapnel and dust choked the car. Passing him quickly, she yanked it back into the lane and let her foot find the gas pedal and her middle finger the air.   
  
"Showoff," Duo muttered, leaning back.  
  
Dorothy waited patiently, acting as well as she could to be unconcerned with him, until the American was asleep and opened the glove compartment and pulled out the syringe.   
  
  
  
* * * * *  
  
  
  
A few hours later, she was at the airport. Dorothy sat watching the ironic fork in the road just challenge her morals. Money? Or escape to a romantic getaway with the boy she didn't romantically love. It was equal sinful, and she frowned. The car when into park as she stared at the signs. One sign said, "L-2 Colony" somewhere in the jumbling collection of the same message in six or seven different languages. The other was "Earth."   
  
Soulless blue eyes turned to Duo's drugged sleeping form. She didn't know what to do.  
  
  
  
  
* * * * *  
  
  
  
He woke up from a jolted nap to the smell of manic humidity making his skin perspire endlessly. It was like some smoky demon raping him from the inside out. Making a few moans of discomfort, he sleepily shifted against the doorframe and awkwardly slipped out of his jacket. It was like an oven. In some dazed sleep fervor, he could almost imagine his coat cooking him raw. He tossed it onto the floor by his feet. With half open eyes, he rolled down the window further and let his face hang out into the cool night air. He sighed with relief and even let his braid hang out in the wind. When he did, he had this odd fear of it detaching from his head and flying away, never to be seen. Shake it off, he told himself. You're insane.  
  
Before he could fall asleep, lights on the side of the road woke him up. He struggled to bring his eyes back into focus. Duo sat up and propped his elbow on the window and saw a friendless gas station and church ahead in the dark artificial night. Rubbing the sleep from his eye, he groaned and turned to look at Dorothy. "Where are we?" he asked.   
  
Still drumming her fingers to the music he hadn't noticed before, she didn't bother to turn her eyes or her head. "L-2," she stated flatly, "Why? Miss your stop somewhere?"  
  
"Yeah, I was supposed to get off before we got to Hell," he snorted sarcastically. "Where are we? I don't remember any long stretches of country in L-2."  
  
"New Wisconsin."  
  
Duo shrugged. "That would explain. But where are the cows? I've always wanted to see a cow. Think we could do a little quick cow tipping on the way there?"  
  
Dorothy rolled her soulless blue eyes and huffed a breath out into the air. It clouded in front of her, on the windshield. She wiped it off and said, angrily, "Don't push your luck. I'm pissed off already."  
  
"Hn. Couldn't tell." He patted his pocket and found he hadn't brought his wallet. "Do you have any money?"  
  
"Yes, but it's for me only. That's why it's mine," she commented with a cold air. "Besides, we're not stopping. I do have orders and if I don't follow those orders, no deal, no money, okay? Once I drop you off, you can visit all the fucking gas stations you want. That is, if Dr. G's in a good mood and doesn't kill you."  
  
"Please Dorothy?" He stared at her, letting no anger sift through. "Like you said, I might not have the chance."  
  
"Fine. We're low on gas anyway. You going to shut up, then?"  
  
"Promise on my life."  
  
"Yeah, that's the most stable thing to promise on."  
  
They pulled in at the gas station; the woman behind the counter was still enveloped in her magazine and barely acknowledged the show of life. Squinting under the bright, industrial lights, he stepped out and slammed the door. Dorothy got out as well and went to filling the gas tank. Duo pushed open the door to the convenience store and listened to the ringing of the bell echo through the empty, fully stocked place. The lady curled a lock of her fuzzy brown hair, puckering her lips every so often to the beauty tips she read in her Cosmo magazine. Duo adjusted his black cap, suddenly feeling alienated in this quiet and socially deprived place. The lady was looking at him now.  
  
"You okay kid?"  
  
"Yeah, I'm fine." Duo looked around, then at Dorothy's money in his hand. He bit his lip, looked out the glass door behind him, and then shook the change in his hand. "You know what, I'm not hungry. See ya."  
  
The lady followed him out with a strange look.   
  
"Whatever," she said, flipping the page.  
  
Dorothy, ghostly white looking from the industrial lights, looked up from leaning against the side of the car. Her blue eyes followed him, her long blonde hair pulled into a ponytail to keep the heat off. He walked up to the trunk of the car and hit his fist against the top of it. "Yo. Here's your money," he said unenthusiastically, tossing it to her. She caught it and cocked one eyebrow up.  
  
"Duo: Suddenly mister generosity. What brings on the Gandhi ways, eh?" Dorothy folded her arms haughtily, smirking her purple lips.   
  
He snorted. "Is it a problem I'm nice? You know as well as I do that I wouldn't have paid you back. Don't you want it back, Dorothy?"  
  
She didn't say anything. She stood there smiling until Duo shook his head, stuffed his hands causally into his pockets and walked out across the street. Once he was gone, she hooked the gas nozzle and shut the cap on the gas tank. He looked up, expecting a full sky of stars, found only black blanketing him. Apparently, L-2 had shut off the artificial lights tonight. Violet eyes darkened with disappointment, he shook his head and continued across the street.  
  
It wasn't the most active church, that was clear from just looking at it, with its lack of lights inside. More so than the gas station across the street. Its stainless steel and brightly lit neighbor dwarfed the wooden beams and rich brown paint. But it still held its own sense of homey pride and Duo knew if it had a head, it would keep it held high, so high that its little church neck would hurt. Catholicism always stunned him with its blind faith in the impossible. Revering a silent god, one that he'd shunned long ago for the fact it never did anything for him. He'd lost faith in God… when God had lost faith in him. Didn't he think that he was able to have friends? Is that why all his friends died?  
  
The doors were open. The air swirling around him was cool and ghostly, refrigerated by the beams of cherry wood. Dust curled up at his feet, like snakes being disturbed from their winter sleep. He passed it from his face, waving a hand, and peered in. Blackness greeted him with open arms, silent and human free. Good. Dealing with some supportive man preaching the word of the god he didn't believe wasn't going to make him very happy. He sat down in the far end of the last pew on the right, finding shelter in the dark of the corner. It didn't make him feel better though, to know in a way he was breaking and entering. In all the times Roman Catholism had been forced upon him in his days of training, he'd been told it was acceptable to visit a church at any hour. That you were a loved child, and God could never punish you for coming for guidance, anytime.   
  
Duo never considered himself loved, by this god or the next man on the street. If this God loved him so much, and so equally, then why did he look away from the hell he'd put them in? Why did God not step in? A bit a hope, salvation, a smack of sense to stop the greed of the mob leaders; why didn't he give any of this? Did he think Duo was just too much of a bastard to deserve it, for something he'd been bred for? For something that was his only purpose for coming into existence? God must have some sick humor, putting Duo there and leaving him there to rot slowly in the stresses of the mob life.  
  
Pain. Self-inflicted. Duo looked down from his swirling, bitter wonderings to see he'd dug his fingernails into the palm of his hand. It wasn't bleeding just yet, but he knew it would be if he kept drifting off into angry thoughts like this.   
  
As much as he hated to admit, he felt that everything that went wrong was God's fault. He'd recognized his own mistakes time after time, but refused to accept it in some insecure part of himself. Pinching the red marks a few times to make sure he didn't bleed, he put his hands into his pocket. Did he really deserve it; was that what he was trying to tell himself, or was he just fucked up so much he couldn't take the blame? Duo breathed a sigh into the blackness, sightless purple eyes lost in the black.  
  
He hated this. He'd get God for personally fucking up his life.  
  
Dorothy screamed from the car, honking it as well so he could hear it. Duo stood up and left, closing the doors behind him with hostile finality.  
  



End file.
